Quick Day in Bangkok #2

As we travel from the south to the north of Thailand, we swung through Bangkok for another day of exploring. It’s a great break between the 12 hour ferry/bus ride from Koh Tao, and the 14 hour train ride we are about to embark on to Chiang Mai. We slept in, got breakfast, then went for a jog through the city to the train station to get our tickets for later that evening. Then Eric & I walked around and grabbed a water taxi back to our hostel.

The water taxi was quite the experience! I just kept laughing as the boat workers were yelling in Thai, jam-packing people onto the boat. They’d be shouting in Thai, and shaking this metal tube filled with change. This went on for a little while, then with the use of universally understood hand motions we (and the other few non-Thai tourists) realized they were trying to get us to go even further into the boat, which seemed like an impossible task. Let’s just say you quickly get to know all your neighbors, and whether or not they’ve showered recently… hahaha. And it was like that at every stop along the river! So by the time you reach your stop, of course you’re way at the front of the boat, problem is the boats are loaded and unloaded from the back, so now it’s time to wiggle and weave back through the people in order to get off the taxi boat. It was an awesome, authentic Thai experience as we were jammed next to Thai kids, adults going to work and monks, all of us going down the river together.

After the awesome taxi boat, we grabbed some snacks for our journey ahead and some street food for dinner. We then took a regular taxi (which are all bright pink in Bangkok) and just barely caught our train.

By the way, I’ve always thought the traffic in the Bay Area was the absolute worst, but that was before experiencing the traffic in Bangkok… It took us twice as long in the taxi than it took us when we ran to the train station earlier that morning. Thus the reason we nearly missed our train. I’m convinced that some intersections don’t have traffic lights, I think the drivers just have this pact to wait behind a crosswalk until one risky motorbike decides to make a go for it across the intersection, then everyone else follows suit!

But good news is, we didn’t miss our train, and we had an awesome taxi driver who laughed at everything he said (must have been a funny guy, but we couldn’t understand him so we just laughed along anyways).

We’ll get one more stop in Bangkok right before we leave Thailand to come home, but for now – off to Chiang Mai!!

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PS – this is us so in need of somethung to do on the train that we guessed how many raisins were in the pack, then counted them hahah. Eric won, my estimation was pitiful :)

Bangkok Quick Stop #1

Hello from Thailand! We made it to Southeast Asia! We landed in Bangkok and had the whole day to explore before getting on a night bus to Southern Thailand. We will be back in Bangkok a few times because most of our buses and flights go via Bangkok, but here is what we did our first day in Thailand!…

We arrived and started walking from the train station at the edge of town to city center. Along the way we came across a mini party in front of a police station. We wandered into the courtyard to see several food stalls, a guy on a stage performing Thai children’s songs, and a bunch of kids and parents dancing! One of the local police officers came up to us and welcomed us with open arms! He was SO excited to see us there! They gave us free food and told us it was a Children’s Day festival. We also had a few older Thai ladies come up to us, welcome us to Thailand, and give us some travel tips. Plus, several people wanted to take pictures with us for some reason haha :) It was a really cool experience and everyone was incredibly nice.

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After that, we headed more to the center of town via a tuktuk!

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We then got some Thai iced tea and coffee at a little cafe, then explored! We wandered around and went to see the Grand Palace (although we didn’t pay to go inside because it was packed! And because they didn’t allow yoga pants, which I was wearing, oops!), the Reclined Buddha in Wat Pho, and of course have some more delicious street food!

 

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After that we took a nap in a park because we didn’t sleep at all on our red-eye flight the night before, then grabbed a quick dinner and headed to our overnight bus – off to Southern Thailand and the island of Koh Tao!