Hey folks! We’ve just left Bangkok – our first stop on our Southeast Asia Adventure, having spent 4 days there. It’s been pretty mental as we were expecting. Here’s our Bangkok (take 1) experience a nutshell…
Generic airport photo
We arrived in a very sorry jet-lagged state after not much sleep on the flight. Free wine and great films were massive perks, but unfortunately we had the most monumental bellends sat behind us, an old French couple who aggressively pushed our seats forward and shouted at us in French every time we reclined them. There’s a special place in hell for those two.
Here we are looking so optimistic when we first got on the plane and saw how ‘comfy’ the seats were (we’re used to flying Ryanair)
Once we finally landed and ventured into the city, we learnt pretty quick that Thai people are so nice; our bus driver stopped directly outside our hostel for us, despite it not being on the bus route. We also learnt quickly that its very easy to be scammed in Bangkok, but I’ll get to that in a bit.
Our hostel had a pool so we spent some of the first day around there, and in the evening we went to the bar where we met a load of people. We spent the night playing beer pong and drinking with our new pals Alpa, Rita, Ana and Amy who we ended up spending the rest of the time in Bangkok with. We had plenty of strange coloured shots but we were defeated by midnight.
The next day we were up and out pretty early with our new crew, and we also met up with Eamon and Mario who we know from home, who happened to arrive in Bangkok on the same day. This is where the tuktuk scam occurred. 10baht per person to see ‘all the sights’ was the promise. We made him swear he wouldn’t take us to any shops (we’d read about this), so instead we ended up going to 2 tourist infos (where the drivers get free fuel if they bring tourists) before he finally took us to the grand palace. Except it wasn’t the grand palace, it was the temple at the end of our road, then he was off. We didn’t pay anything but he wasted an hour of our time. We are total fools.
This picture of our first tuktuk ride is fantastic. Our friend Alpa is loving it, we are…not so. We got used to them eventually!
One thing that I really didn’t warm to in Bangkok, other than how mentally busy the traffic is, was the number of people trying to sell you things all the time. It was relentless.
We decided to skip the grand palace in the end as it was a bit pricey, and instead went to see the reclining buddha and surrounding temples. After that we got on a boat over to Wat Arun (where we missed our stop and had a nice long ride along the river), but we met a nice guy on the boat who happened to own the bar next to our hostel. It was all worth it because Wat Arun was incredible. And we saw a teenage girl wearing a t-shirt that said ’Sperm’ on it. Not sure what that was about.
That night we went for dinner, then had drinks in the hostel, before heading to the boat guy’s bar where we drunk for a couple of hours, before we hit the famous party strip, Koh San Road. It was as mental as we predicted! We didn’t get there ’til 1 and at 2 everything shuts (whaaaaat), so we only got a little taste of it. We grabbed some beers and went back to a room for drinks before calling it a night at 4am.
The Bangkok crew: Eamon, Mario, Rita, Ana, Alpa, Chloe, Annie and some locals!
The girls on Khao San Road
Our first bucket!
The next day was pathetic fallacy at its finest – we were hungover, still not over the jet lag, and we experienced our first Thai downpour. Mental scenes of gut busting thunder, crazy lightening and rain nothing like we get in the UK. We finally rallied ourselves by 7pm when the weather calmed and we could stand up without feeling sick, and went to check out the shopping centre, where we found some fantastic Thai brands, including H&M and Boots… and we ate pizza. As cultural days go, this one was bad. But we enjoyed ourselves.
For our last day in Bangkok, we headed out early to the famous Chatuchak weekend market with our new roomie, also called Annie. The market was huge and you could buy pretty much anything. We had a great browse but the heat was overwhelming (if I haven’t mentioned yet, Bangkok is SO humid), so we found a nearby park to chill, or at least try to. Next we headed to Chinatown for the vegetarian festival, which I was very exited about. However Chinatown was so busy and overwhelming, and we were pretty frazzled by this point, so we grabbed some spring rolls and some weird kind of doughnuts and got out of there!
Back at the hostel there was a pool party happening, so Eamon and Mario joined us and we played some water volleyball. That was a fun way to end our Bangkok experience, and at 7pm we headed for the night bus to head up north to Chiang Mai – an 11 hour journey, the first of many!
Bangkok, you were mental, overwhelming, very fun, obscenely hot…pretty much everything we had expected you to be. Bring on the cool mountain air and chill city vibes from stop 2 – Chiang Mai!
Annie x
Number of items lost: 3
Number of beds slept in: 2
Number of bus/train/plane/boats: 1
Pint-Sized Adventurers 