More than “One Night in Bangkok”

Alright, so we’re back on chronological track now that our Nepal Trek post is up. Prior to that post we left our friends in Qatar after Christmas and were headed to Thailand. We spent a month in Thailand so we’ve broken it down into three separate posts: Bangkok, Southern Thailand and Northern Thailand.

Bangkok

Our evening flight from Doha to Bangkok took us through the night and with the time change we arrived in Thailand the next afternoon. Honestly, we were tired from the flight and feeling down after leaving Bob’s. This is common after the holidays I think but it almost felt like we should be heading home. We expected to feel like this at some point along the trip, and here it was. The ride from the airport into Bangkok was underwhelming and the part of the city we drove through was unappealing. After India it was like there wasn’t anything interesting enough to catch our eye. I’ll chalk it up to jet lag and a Christmas hangover because once we arrived at our guest house, had some AMAZING food, strolled around our neighborhood to the river nearby and walked through a market we were re-energized, ready and excited to continue exploring.

At the pier near our guesthouse these frog/toads were often dumped in the river as part of an offering and prayer ceremony.

Tiny turtles sold at the market around the corner from our guesthouse.

That first night we experienced one of the heaviest rainfalls I’ve ever seen. We had just picked up some fruit shakes from a street stall and were headed toward a market street when we felt some large rain drops. Luckily there was a bar with a large metal awning to take shelter under. We thought we’d maybe have to wait 10 minutes because rain that hard couldn’t possible last very long……45 minutes later we were still sharing the awning with bar staff (who happened to be lady boys – an eye-opening sight for the girls), food stall workers and other travellers. The street was like a river. With no sign of it slowing down, we took off our shoes, hailed a cab, waded out into the street, jumped in and headed back to our guesthouse.

Bangkok is known for many things (insert Hangover 2 references and other non-PG activities here from your imagination) and shopping is definitely one of them. I’m not talking high-end, Crazy, Rich, Asians style shopping, there is that too, but market shopping. We happened to be there on a weekend and were able to experience one of the biggest markets in Asia, the Chatuchak Market.

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig…..

Cabs in Bangkok are metered and very cheap, especially for 4 people. Sometimes the cabbies try to get away with no meter and giving you a set rate. This is actually illegal and should be reported. We found a cab to take us to the Chatuchak Market….the place was unbelievable. It’s about 35 acres and has over 8000 stalls. You can find pretty much anything, even Thai massage stalls, randomly interspersed between plastic kitchen goods and essential oils lol. The four of us sat down for a dynamite 30 minute massage (legs and feet for the girls and I and back/neck/shoulders for Mark) for about $3 each!

The food section of the market had Mark salivating from the time we arrived. He kept asking the rest of us if we were hungry every 10 minutes. Finally, we gave in and spent an hour buying different foods from random stalls around the market. Fruit smoothies, grilled meats, Pad Thai, fresh fruit, grilled veggies, seafood (standard and strange…) and Thai desserts etc were up for sale.

We were officially out of our one day slump and ready for more!

Our guest house, Shanti Lodge, was great. We had a family room, AC (Bangkok had us melting), and it was cheap!! It was close to the river (transportation by boat is fast and cheap in Bangkok), in a quiet neighbourhood (good for sleeping), but really close to lots of the places we wanted to see.

The next day our plan was to visit the Grand Palace and Reclining Buddha, which were right beside each other, so we figured we’d see them both and then wander a bit. Well….let’s just say after the disaster that was the Grand Palace we decided to skip the Buddha that day. What happened? Large holiday crowds and us making the mistake of staying up too late and getting a slow start. We hit the Palace around 11am. Word to the wise: line up to get in before opening or don’t bother. It was so hot and we were smothered into a bottleneck of people entering the gates, then we bottlenecked at security, then we bottlenecked at the ticket window ($80 to get in!!), then we bottlenecked at the entrance. Finally, we were in and don’t get me wrong, the whole complex is astounding. The temples are opulent and the architecture is ornate, but it’s hard to enjoy when you can hardly move to see anything and the sweat, so much sweat. The Emerald Buddha is one of the most famous in Thailand and is housed in the temple at the Palace, it’s a must see, but I still can’t even believe we decided to go in and have a look (totally my idea – a bad one).

I imagine there is air conditioning inside…..

PS. We did see the Reclining Buddha another day, but we went in the evening, close to closing time and there were only a few other people there! The lighting was gorgeous and we didn’t sweat at all, lol.

Buddha with the lounging photobomb in the background.

The girls wanted to make sure that Mark and I adhered to all the rules.

These giant stone statues were used for weight in empty cargo chips during ancient trading days. Now, temple decorations.

Happier family in the cool , less crowded, evening.

After the debacle that was the Palace we were done with crowds for the day. We had read about the “Green Lung of Bangkok” and decided to head there. It’s a neighborhood in the city that is sparsely populated and feels like you’ve landed in the middle of a secluded jungle. To get there we found a cab that would take us to the Klong Toei pier (we had a hard time, apparently no one in Bangkok knows about this place. Even the owner of our guesthouse hadn’t heard about it). From there we got into small boat (like 1 foot above the water small) that shuttled us across the river for free because we were renting bikes on the other side.

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When we got off there was a lady who rented us some bikes ($3 each – I’ll let you imagine the quality) and gave us a map of the area. We knew there was a floating market somewhere in the Green Lung and we took off to find it. There were very few cars, mostly scooters and bikes, so it made for easy riding. We got a little lost taking the “bike paths” (1m wide raised concrete paths over water in many paces) through the jungle. There were a smattering of stilt houses as we wound our way through, stopping to ask for directions from any people we ran into along the way. Eventually we made it to the market without any serious injuries and, of course, had something to eat. Molly almost burned her tongue off eating a BBQ’d pork kebab that had a red chili pepper on it (she overlooked that part). Thank goodness for watermelon smoothies! We had to have the bikes back before dark to catch the last boat back, so we took the long way and enjoyed cycling through the crazy vegetation.

Mark’s near death experience.

We thought finding a cab to get there was hard; getting one back was impossible. So, we jumped on a city bus for $0.15 each and headed for our guest house. It was New Year’s Eve and we knew the fireworks were going to be awesome, but our experience with Bangkok transportation told us we’d have a hard time getting back from where we wanted to watch the fireworks. Mr. Happy, the owner of Shanti Lodge, happened to mention that his wife and sister-in-law chartered a long boat to go out on the river to watch the fireworks and they were looking for others to split the cost. In all, 10 of us went out and had the perfect vantage point to see the show. We were back and in bed by 12:45. WIN!

We had a lazy start to New Year’s Day, blame it on the late night and Bangkok heat. What better way to re-energize but at a waterpark! Our New Year’s Day was spent on the roof of a giant mall zipping down water slides and floating in the lazy river. Afterward we filled our guts at the food court before heading to the highlight of our New Year celebration…..Muay Thai fights!! Let’s just say this was the highlight for the other 3, not me, but it was interesting and fun to see the girls enjoying it. The Rajadamnern Arena is THE place to see Muay Thai in Bangkok, the atmosphere was exciting and the locals placing bets and cheering really spiced things up (for me at least).

Time in Bangkok has to include a visit to Khao San Road at night. We went in the early evening to spare the girls the debauchery that happens later on, but we got an eyeful none the less. The street is crowded with friendly travellers, food stalls, massssssage parlours (imagine this being called out to you in a high, nasally, drawn out whine – “Hello, maaasssssage” NON-STOP), crazy food (bugs, croc, weird seafood), locals selling buckets of beer and offering laughing gas, lady boys and live music. It’s absolute chaos and we loved it. The girls wanted to go back every night. We compromised and took them to Chinatown another night, which was just as chaotic, but with less weird stuff and tons of food. We ate at a street stall on plastic chairs and only noticed the giant cockroaches scurrying around when we were just about done our food!!

They said it tasted like salt and vinegar chips!

Durian. Not allowed in a lot of hotel because it smells like rotting meat.

A river cruise, more market eating and shopping rounded out our time in Bangkok. On our last day we did a free cooking class at our guesthouse. We are officially experts in the area of green papaya salad and Pad Thai. While we were finishing up the class we overheard a couple talking about changing their plans to head south. Mr. Happy told us that the forecast was looking bad in the south and that the weather reports were calling for a tropical storm. We did some research and saw it looked like it was only going to last a few days and probably not affect the area we were headed to very much, so we kept our plan and headed to the airport. 8 hours later our plane took off headed for Krabi…..almost cancelled.