Bangkok, Thailand

Siam Square

I'm back with another blog from Bangkok. It's now Sunday night and we've been in Bangkok since Tuesday afternoon. I suppose that this is a long time to be in one city, but I always envisioned it to be quite nice to start this world trip slowly, and it turns out that I was right. However, we have not done as much sight seeing as you might suspect. We've been far too busy enjoying the wonderul time capsule that is our hotel:


entrance


lobby


hotel cat


proof of Elizabeth Gilbert's presence (EEK!)

And relaxing by the pool:


pool


hotel dog

And eating:


having vegetarian pad thai on Khao San Road, Banglamphu

But don't be fooled - we have explored a LOT of this city: by taxi, sky train, metro, boat, tuk-tuk and on foot. I must admit that I was a little bit intimidated by Bangkok at first, but this quickly passed. Although this is a very big city that is, at times, overwhelming, it is easily navigable. The Thai are nice people who do not bother you very much and who are adoringly sweet to their pets and to animals in general. I also find the city to be surprisingly clean, but perhaps this is because I compare it to southern India. It is very hot in Bangkok, however, and very humid at that. September is the wettest month of the year so we have rains every single day. It was particularly bad on Thursday (more on that later) and there have been several floods in the country this summer. But not to worry - there is no danger where we are staying or where we are going.

We began exploring on Wednesday by taking the sky train to Siam Square where we quickly made our way to the Mahboonkrong (MBK) Food Center to visit a famous vegetarian food stall that had some very spicy curry (thank GOD for the coconut drink and dessert).

On Thursday we took a sky train, a metro and a boat to the Banglamphu neighborhood because I insisted on seeing the famous backpacker ghetto called Khao San Road. Here we scored some nice food and a couple of books for on the road, but we were done quite quickly and, I must say, I'm glad not to be staying there. Then the worst rain since we've been here started to pour down and, after waiting for a little while, we started to look for a quick boat taxi in vain until we finally found an empty tuk-tuk to take us back to the metro. After another metro and sky train ride and a little walk, we were finally home - drenched.

Because of all this drama we were completely exhausted and did nothing on Friday except hang out at the tropical garden and pool.

On Saturday we felt that it was time to do some serious sight seeing, so we made our way to Ko Ratanakosin. Here we visited Wat Phra Kaew (also known as the Temple of the Emerald Buddha) and the Grand Palace. We also made a trip to Wat Pho, which houses a 46 meters long, 15 meters high, reclining Buddha. It was absolutely breathtaking, all of it.

Today we only made one little trip to Wat Traimit to see its 3 meters tall, 5,5 tonne, solid-gold Buddha - very impressive indeed. Since we were tired and it started raining yet again, we quickly came back to the Atlanta.


Ko Ratanakosin


reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, Ko Ratanakosin

And here we are. This is our last night at the Atlanta and in Bangkok. Tomorrow we plan to visit Jim Thompson's House and the Erawan Shrine, because these sights are close to the neighborhood that we are staying in: Sukhumvit. Then we're going to take a taxi to take us to Hualamphong Train Station because at 7.35 PM our train to Chiang Mai leaves! I'm very excited to visit this supposedly great city in northern Thailand - we booked a second class sleeper train and I've ALWAYS wanted to travel on a sleeper train. I'm also scared, though, because for our arrival there we have booked... nothing. Of course I know that this is part of the fun, but still, it's scary. I plan to take Jochem' mother's advice, however, who said that one person should stay with the backpacks at a cafe while the other looks for accommodation - I fully intend to be the one staying at the cafe while Jochem plays out his strengths and finds us a room! We'll see how it all turns out. Chiang Mai, here we come!


in the rain (again!) at Wat Traimit, near Hualamphong Train Station

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip (and some clips of me NOT jumping off the teeny, tiny, little brick wall at the swimming pool), check out our picture gallery here!