I bid farewell to India, where I've spent the last 3 weeks of my life and head to the airport. Now, if you know anything about my airline history, you know that something’s goes wrong every occasion and this is no exception…. Everyone boards the plane. The door shuts. The captain announces there’s a mechanical issue and we will have to wait an hour and a half for them to fix it. Of course, right? I’m supposed to arrive in Bangkok, Thailand at 7 and now I arrive at 8:30. Not a big deal but when you arrive in a foreign country by yourself, you don’t want it to be too late so you can take public transportation safely. We finally take off but the service on Jet Airways is less the moderate. I don’t really care but the older English gentleman proceeded to get irate at the stewardess. It was definitely awkward because he was yelling and I was between him and the poor flight attendant.
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| Lounge area of Lub d |
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| Marvelous bathroom digs. Shannon is super happy! |
I arrive at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. I collect my enormous backpack and head to the metro/skyrail station. I have to change trains twice, but I don’t mind because the metro is UH-MAZING! I can already tell the huge difference between India and Thailand. It’s clean, air conditioned, smooth, on time, and efficient. The airport is far from the city center so I don’t exit the metro until about 10pm. I have no idea where my hostel is but I know I'm close. Nothing is open so I cannot ask anyone so I get a tuk tuk to take me to my hostel: Lub d in the Silom district, which means, “sleep well” in Thai.
I cannot even express to you the sigh of relief I had when I walked in the door. Not just cause I was tired of carrying my heavy backpack, but the hostel was bloody spectacular. I've stayed in many hostels and this is by far the best one I've ever been to. Even better then the ones in Europe. There was individual showers, free wifi, computers, reading lights, clean sheets, towels, and of course A BAR! Some of the stuff I was particularly excited about after arriving from India.
I check in and notice there was a bunch of people downstairs chatting so after I arrange my things, I grab a large beer and ask to join the conversation. There was a British couple, a Polish guy, and James from London. They are fascinated with the fact that I just went to India so the next hour is all about the time I had there. It was great for me to vent to other travelers about the chaos of touring India. The polish guy was going there for 6 months so I had to give him the whole run down about the do’s and don’ts. Everyone then gave me advise about traveling in Thailand and what to do in Bangkok while I'm here for the next few days.
We talk until 2am and then I decided to hit the sack and maybe catch some sleep before Heather arrives in a few hours. I of course didn’t sleep a wink and she walked in the door at 3:30am. We give each other hugs but we are both exhausted from our journey (especially her). We fall asleep and get ready for our first full day in the Land of Smiles.
Traveling across the world does a toll on your body and Heather was definitely feeling the effects of jet lag. The poor thing only slept 3 hours and was wide-awake at 7am and I didn’t get up till 10. Regardless, we both had the energy to go for a morning run. We ran down Silom road and to Lumphini Park. It was hot and humid with a few clouds in the sky. Absolutely a perfect day for a run! Unfortunately, Heather not only struggled with the humidity, but she was also getting over a cold so we did about a 3-mile run/walk. It was a great way to start the day, despite the fact that a 3 foot iguana ran right in front of me and scared the living daylights out of me until I realized it was just as frightened as I was. Only in Thailand…
After showering, we met up with James for lunch. 2 others joined us: a girl from England and Darin from Australia. So there were 5 of us who went across the street for some grub. Heather was smart and got the duck soup. I decided to be adventurous and got the duck leg wing special. Hmmmm how do I put this? I had no idea was I was getting myself into. It was more bones then meat and while the meat was good, it didn’t satisfy a super hungry stomach like mine at the time. Very bazaar but definitely an experience. Lol.
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| Silom nightlife |
Lesson of the day: ping pong shows of Thailand. Prepare yourself… it’s a famous spectacle in Bangkok where women shove things up their “hoo-ha” and do other sorts of tricks. The shows name – ping-pong – comes from the fact that women used to use (or maybe still do) ping-pongs and shoot them into buckets. Sickening huh? Well there’s apparently a bunch of people who go see them hence the vast number of ping-pong clubs. I am unhappy to announce I am now one of those sickos. Darin coaxed me into going (for the sole reason that he would pay for the beer if I did). We went. We saw. We left. (After about 5 minutes too. I couldn’t handle it.) Only in Thailand…
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| Beautiful day for a walk! |
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| Heather and I went to town on these fried bananas! |
Heather wakes up refreshed. Me, not so much. This time I had nightmares form the ping-pong show and not from the malaria medication. We took our time in the morning and did our own walking tour of Bangkok. We first walked up Surawong Road to Rama IV Road so we could get our night train tickets to Chiang Mai the next day. Then we meandered our way through Chinatown where we saw the quintessential restaurants and bazaar Chinese medicine shops (selling shark fin, dried bladders, or whatever).
After devouring some fried bananas, we stopped to rest our feet and legs at Suan Rommani Park for about 20 minutes. Then went to Wat Suthat so we could bow down to our first golden Buddha. Really a cool experience. I think the Buddhists got it right…. We were starving by this point so we stopped and had some pad thai. I had shrimp and Heather had chicken. It was bout $2.50 each and it was amazing!
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| Chowing down on some good ole fashion shrimp pad thai |
After a 9-kilometer walk, which took about 4 hours, we again approached the Grand Palace and then Khaosan Road (Heather wanted to shop). I resisted the urge only cause my backpack is so f*#$ing heavy, there’s no way Imp buying more clothes. I’m only allowed to buy gifts for friends but Imp trying to hold out as long as possible so I don’t re-herniate my back. Heather bought a few cute things but now we are tired and want to head back to the hostel.
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| Heather and I shopping for all you folks at home! |
Its peak hour traffic but we get a tuk tuk anyways. It took about 40 minutes to get back and there were a few moments where we weren’t moving for about 5 straight minutes. Shoot me… Poor Heather and her asthma were dying from all the fumes. Finally we made it back to Lub d so we could shower and get ready for the evenings pub-crawl!
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| Scared for our lives! |
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| Your neighborhood tuk tuk driver |
Since we bought our train tickets the day before, we were all set to depart at 7:30pm, leaving us the whole day to explore a different area of Bangkok. Before heading out, we grabbed some food on Silom road. I got the spicy chicken and basil leaf and Heather got the pineapple prawn dish. They were both amazing, though I was having stomach trouble. Probably a combination of late night pad thai and sangsom.
We decided to take a canal tour but they were way too expensive so we opted to take the same ferry up the Chao Phraya River but to the last stop. Needless to say, that was where only the locals go and it was pretty cool. It took just about an hour to reach the end. We go off and there was a small market going on. We marched through the locals picking up bargains and some street snacks before heading back down the river. It was a beautiful day and I managed to get slightly sunburned on one arm (cause I was sitting on the sunny side of the boat, kinda like a drivers tan). So sexy.
We got back to the hostel with about 30 minutes before we had to leave. We washed off as much as we could, reapplied deodorant, and put our backpacks back on. We’re going to Chiang Mai!
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