My trip back to Bangkok started off not on the best foot. The taxi driver tried to charge me 570 Baht to my hotel. I had to repeatedly tell him "meter" for him to give in and remove the towel covering the meter. He also took the receipt that the taxi stand gave me so that I could not report him and when I asked for it back, would give me a different receipt. I was pretty livid and started taking pictures of him and his cab so that I could report him if anything did happen.
In the end, it cost me 400 Baht. Here are some pictures I took of his cab.
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| Taxi Identification Number |
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| Cab I took to my hotel |
After that debacle, I got to my hotel on Soi Ram Buttri which is one block from Soi KhaoSan. It was great to walk in and find one of my school friends waiting for me. I arrived at 1:45pm.
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| Nice to see a familiar face |
The hotel itself was all that I needed. Bed, AC, hot water. After my expensive trip by myself through Indonesia and Singapore, $12.5 USD a night sounded amazing. The one thing that kind of sucks is that it is not next to a light rail or metro station. We had to take a taxi to get to the rest of Bankok.
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| Hotel Hallway |
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| Hotel Room |
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| Hotel Bathroom |
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| Hotel Bathroom |
I dropped off some laundry at 30 Baht/kilogram and walked the surrounding area with my friend. I skipped the first set of street food trying to see what my options were but I quickly gave in because I was starving. I started with some fried chicken and moved on to some pastry type thing with a salty filling.
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| Fried Chicken |
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| Fried Chicken |
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| Street Food - Salty something? |
There were a lot of random things for sale as we walked the surrounding shops. We wanted to go to chinatown but after what we learned about things closing on the days surrounding chinese new year we scrapped that plan.
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| Sushi - single pieces |
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| Lonely Planet Books - Looks like you don't have to lug around all those LP books in your luggage |
After 30 minutes of wandering, we ended up at Khao San Road. It was packed with tourists and backpackers. There were a lot of things for sale. Some surprising, some not.
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| Ko San Road |
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| Mangosteen Shake |
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| Fake Ids, Diplomas, etc |
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| Mangos - I LOVE Mangos |
So, this is pretty much our vacation. The fact that we can walk with beers on the street makes it very easy to keep drinking. The beers run about 30 Baht for a small Chang and 44 for a large Chang. There is this little quirky rule where they do not allow the sale of alcohol at 7-11s at certain hours. This is when you have to buy it on the street or at a bar.
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| Sigh - why no beer between 2pm and 5pm? |
We went back rested and went back out. Our third friend was coming in at midnight so we didn't want to do anything too crazy. We decided to stay in the local area and just eat and check out some bars. We continued our street food theme and went to a place that was in one of our travel guides. We pretty much pick a few things that look good and they dump it on some rice. It ended up being about 40 baht. We took a seat on some kiddie chairs and got some beers from the 7-11 next door.
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| Street Food Dinner - Spicy Pork Belly and Ground Pork over Rice |
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| Where I got my food |
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| My friends Dish |
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| Food Stall Across the Street |
After dinner, we walked back and was treated to a show. Some young actors were inside of dragon costumes shaking and moving. At the end, they set of some fireworks. They happened to be 3 feet to my right and scared the shit out of me.
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| Chinese New Year Dragons |
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| Add caption |
After the show we went down some side streets. We saw some bars, shops, and came across insects. We ate a few, one for me, 10 for my friend. I ended up giving my share of the bugs away to the annoying people that try to sell you stuff.
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| Stores along side streets of Ko San |
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| Grasshoppers |
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| More Bugs |
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| We got sick of eating bugs so I started feeding them to everyone that asked me to buy something from them |
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| Ditto - Looks a little like Barak |
A lot of restaurants seemed to have live music. It was chill and relaxing. At the same time, it is a little seedy because of all the working girls.
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| Live Music |
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| Street Food - Pad Thai |
We stayed out till about 1am and headed back to our hotel to wait for our last friend. He arrived at about 1:30am. Well, more like drove past our hotel and we had to knock on the window at 1:30am. We handed him a beer and decided to turn it in for the night.
Day 2
We started everyday with breakfast at this restaurant right next to our hotel. It was about 100 baht for a decent meal: eggs, toast, and coffee.
We decided to spend the day clearing some errands. They did not have sim cards yet so we decided to go get some at MBK. I had gotten my sim card there the week b4 I left for Burma.
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| Before |
Trying to be adventurous, we decided to jog to the mall that was about 3 km away. We ended up mostly walking and did some jogging. It was nearly impossible considering the concentration required to not run over people on the streets and not get hit by a car when crossing the street.
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| Walk/Run to Mall |
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| Passed some train tracks |
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| Muy Thai Boxing in a park? |
We arrived there after about 30 minutes. We spent another 30 minutes to buy and configure the sim card. We then went for food. I ended up getting some curry which was decently spicy and paired it with more mango.
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| 6th Floor of MBK |
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| Chicken Curry with vegatables |
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| Mango Shake |
We decided to cab it back after our little adventure.
With the 2nd night in front of us and our entire "team" in attendance, we decided to get some dinner and try to find a bar that wasn't overloaded with working girls.
Dinner was on Ram Buttri at a restaurant that said that a whole grilled fish was 150 baht. What they don't tell you is that if you want some special seasoning, it is 200 baht. This place also had live music. We sat there enjoying the music and people watched.
Aside: [Food does not come out at once. Our fish came out 1 at a time, 10 minutes apart. Be aware of this when travelling to some of these countries]
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| Grilled Fish with Chili Sauce |
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| Live Music |
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| I guess there are other good things about being in a backpacker area |
After dinner, we tried to talk to some people and they told us that Nana Plaza was a good place to go to have a drink and not be bothered by working girls. We took there advice and went. I did not bring my camera for this part so there are no pictures.
We took a cab and after some confusion with our cab driver, we got off a little bit early. After talking to some cab drivers we found out that we were on muslim street. After exploring the area, we came across little africa.
Kinda frustrated after not finding what we were looking for, we got onto the main street and happend across an irish bar. It had about 10 people and some pool tables. After getting some beers, we made some observations. It seems like playing pool is a way of picking up a working girl. There was never 2 guys playing. It was always one awkward old white guy and some thai girl. After finishing our drinks, we quickly left.
After asking around a little bit we figured out how to get to Nana Plaza. When we got there, it was the exact opposite of what we were looking for. It was 3 floors of gogo bars with old women trying to get you to come inside the clubs. There were 100s of working girls, with half of them probably being ladyboys.
We knew our night was coming to an end when we were stopped by 3 ladyboys. They literally got in front of us and would not let us pass. We sidestepped them using our quick sidestepping ability and continued on our way. That's when I heard my friends telling me to run. WTF?! These ladyboys were actually chasing us! I don't know for what reason but i didn't stick around to find out. After 5 minutes, they gave up. Thankfully.
After that crazyness, we found some asian guy laughing walking 5 feet to our right. He was obviously assumed by our incident. He walked up to us and asked us where we were from. We replied Canada (we were telling everyone we were from Canada because of the recent terrorist warning in Bangkok). He replied with some indeterminable sound (later, we found that he asked Manitoba, an area of Canada). I replied "huh?!" immediately giving away that we weren't from Canada. Cover blown, we told him we were from the states. We talked for 15 minutes and he gave us a lot of advice on what to do in Bangkok.
Feeling informed and having had quite an interesting night we headed back. When we got back, we found that our breakfast fast makes a nightly transformation.
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| The American Breakfast Place at Night |
Day 3
In 2 days, we did a lot of wandering without any direction. We decided to knock off some of the must-dos of Bangkok. After breakfast, we made our way to the Grand Palace. We got through the hoard of people trying to sell us stuff, the cars that were trying to hit us, and tuk tuk drivers taking to a gem show and arrived at more of the same around the palace.
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| Walk to Grand Palace |
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| For sale |
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| Amulets |
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| Buddahs |
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| Diesel Elephan |
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| Snacks |
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| Restaurant on the River |
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| Walkway parallel to the river |
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| Books that value Buddah amulets |
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| Stones? |
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| Getting some dental work done |
After the hour of walking in the hot sun, we settled down for a refreshing dessert of grass jelly around the corner from the Grand Palace. At the place, we ran across a tour guide that said not to believe anything that the people outside the temple say. They will tell you that's it's closed or even try to sell you fake tickets.
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| Grass Jelly with Ice |
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| The Restaurant we got grass jelly at |
When we got to the Grand Palace, we were told it was closed and redirected to another entrance that also was closed. Annoyed, we headed back to the main entrance and I tried to force my way in past the guards. They stopped me. I tried again. They called more guards. I tried again. That's when an american tourist told me that they were actual guards with real guns and that the temple was actually closed. OH. We turned around and decided to just go to the two other temples on our agenda: Wat Pho and Wat Arun.
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| Outside the Grand Palace |
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| Not the right way |
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| Guy that guards that wouldn't let me in |
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| Statue at Wat Pho |
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| View inside Wat Pho |
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| Friend's shoes |
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| Other friend's shoes |
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| Feet |
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| There was a lot of this today - waiting for shoes to be put back on |
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| Reclining Buddah |
It rained.
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| I want to be on this bus |
Before heading to Wat Arun, we sat down for a quick meal.
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| Thai Iced Tea |
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| Pineapple Juice |
Some more market items.
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| These pictures are a little suggestive |
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| These pictures are a little suggestive |
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| These pictures are a little suggestive |
We had to take a ferry to get to Wat Arun.
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| Yes.. it is only 3 baht (10 cents USD to use the river ferry) |
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| Wat Arun from the ferry |
After the temple, we treated ourselves by risking our lives inside of a tuk tuk.
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| View from inside a tuk tuk |
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| View from inside a tuk tuk |
After our exhaustive day, we decided to meet up with our closest 12 friends from school at a rooftop bar. Our cab ride over took over an hour but we were heavily amused by our cab driver who may have been mentally insane.
No camera at this point.
At the top of the hotel, the views were amazing but the drinks were expensive. After a few drinks, we headed out to dinner and had some good but relatively expensive food. Afterwards, we headed to Q bar. There was a 500 baht cover charge that included 2 drinks. The music was good and we had a good time before we headed home.
Day 4
Day 4 was full tour day. The day started at 6am. After our late night, we wanted to nap on the 1 hour drive to Kanchanaburi but our tour guide, Charlie, had other ideas.
He drove fast: so fast that you are scared to close your eyes. Also, he started to give us the history of Thailand with the help of props. Props that he handled with the same hands that were supposed to be steering.
When we got to the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, it got pretty quiet. It was pretty sad to see all those graves.
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| Kanchanaburi War Cemetery |
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| Kanchanaburi War Cemetery |
After 5 mins, we got back on the bus and headed to the bridge over river kwai. We were on a tight schedule because we only had 1 day to do all the activities that we wanted to do. On our way from the bridge, we happened across a baby leopard. The local zoo had him there as a marketing scheme to drive up attendance since everyone went to the tiger temple. It was only a 100 baht to feed the leopard. It was ADORABLE but I was very hesitant. I was even more hesitant after the little guy decided to bite my calf to see what I was. I couldn't resist and decided to feed him. When the 1st bottle ran out, the 2nd bottle came IMMEDIATELY. I crapped my pants when the 2nd bottle was finished and a 3rd didn't come.
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| Bridge over River Kwai |
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| Baby Leopard |
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| Baby Leopard |
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| Baby Leopard |
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| Baby Leopard |
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| Waker upper after no sleep |
Our next stop was to Erawan Falls.
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| Elephant Crossing |
We saw some monkeys, swam in the river, and had our toes tickled.
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| Erawan Falls |
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| Walking to the Falls |
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| Monkey eating some chips |
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| Monkey peeing |
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| Waterfall |
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| 2nd set of falls out of 7? - you swim to the little area under the waterfall |
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| Fish in the river eat the skin on your feet |
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| What they look like |
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| More waterfalls |
Since we were a little ahead of schedule, we took the long cut through a bamboo forest.
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| Long cut |
We made a quick 5 min stop and fed a baby elephant.
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| Baby Elephan |
Starving, we stopped at a restaurant along the way. Charlie ordered for us and the food was really good. This may have something to do with the fact that we were starving
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| Restaurant along they way |
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| Chicken Curry |
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| Aww |
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| Chicken with Cashews |
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| Thai Iced Tea |
Our next stop was the tiger temple. We got to pet them, rest of them, and walk them, most of the time scared for our lives.
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| Tiger Beach |
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| Don't wake it up! |
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| Feeding deer |
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| Bears on the way out |
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| Tapioca Plant |
Our last stop for the day was an elephant rodeo. We rode an elephant bareback and got tossed into the river repeatedly. Her name was Full Moon.
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| Getting dunked in the water |
Done with our tour, Charlie drove even faster back to the hotel. We were back by 530.
There were a lot of random things for sale as we walked the surrounding shops. We wanted to go to chinatown but after what we learned about things closing on the days surrounding chinese new year we scrapped that plan.
We arrived there after about 30 minutes. We spent another 30 minutes to buy and configure the sim card. We then went for food. I ended up getting some curry which was decently spicy and paired it with more mango.
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