DAY ONE
Of all the twenty or so countries we are visiting this year, Thailand is right up there in the top three countries we are most excited to visit. Vietnam and the Philippines are probably the other two.
To date we have been traveling for two months and have visited four vastly different countries. Our trip far can fairly be described as exciting, exhilarating, educational, exhausting, and often times frustrating, overwhelming, and theatrical. The word “relaxing” is most certainly not included. We are confident the beaches of Southeast Asia will turn the tide.
**Before we write about our first visit to Thailand (we are returning in a few weeks), we want to share something interesting unrelated to our travelings. Both of us have a personal connection to the country that Nadine also learned from Ben a few days ago. It's a bit of a history lesson, but bear with us for minute.
Currently the reigning King of Thailand is Vajiralongkorn, also known as Rama X. He is the 10th monarch in the Charki dynasty, dating back to 1782. His father, named Bhumibol, was Rama IX. They have all been referred to as Rama, which derives from the Hindu God Rama, an avator of Vishnu. The first King was Rama I, the second was Rama II, etc. etc. Now we have Rama X. Anyway, Bhumibol had four children, two of whom are relevant for this story. The eldest daughter Ubol Ratana was first in line to the throne until she renounced her claim in 1972 when she married an American Peter Jensen and permanently moved to the States to start a new life. In turn, she was stripped of all her royal titles. Her brother, the unpopular playboy Vajiralongkorn, whom his father, the King, referred to as a "Don Juan," was named crowned prince.
In the US, Ubol Ratana formally changed her name to Julie Jensen, moved to San Diego with her husband, and had three children. While the oldest child was schooled abroad in England, the two younger children attended and graduated from, you guessed it, Torrey Pines High School! The son, a sweet autistic boy nicknamed Poom, graduated in 2001, while the younger sister, Sirikitiya, graduated in 2003. Ben attended TP at the same time as both of the kids (as did Nadine's older brother Eddy), while Nadine was there at the same time as the younger sister.
Tragically, Poom drowned in a tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004. He received a full royal funeral attended by the entire royal family :(
It took a while to get there, but that is our personal connection to Thailand.
Our rough plan is to start in Bangkok for a few days, visit the main spots in Cambodia for several days, head east to Ho Chi Minh before figuring our way up the Vietnam coast to Hanoi. There we will head back west through Laos to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai before flying down to the storied beaches of Thailand for a couple weeks. We will either take a train, bus, or plane to Malaysia and Singapore. We will still have about six weeks left until we need to be in Hong Kong, so the tentative plan is try to visit Indonesia for a week or two before finishing our Southeast Asia tour on the 7,000+ islands of the Philippines.
Bangkok is one of those rare cities that can take a tourist in any direction. There is no shortage of restaurants, bars, temples, massage parlors, and other cultural attractions to fill up a day. For us, two young travelers in our early thirties who don’t party, do drugs, and rarely drink, the Bangkok we will visit is different than many others.
We left Sri Lanka bright and early, arriving in Bangkok in the mid afternoon. For economical reasons, we chose to fly on a budget airline called Thai Lion Air. With a terrible safety rating and a history of fatal crashes, the low cost of the flight made perfect sense. We boarded the plane, said a few Hail Marys, and took off. Aside from a few turbulent bumps during the 4.5 hour flight, the flight was fine. With Buddha watching over us, we did not crash. In fact, he blessed us with a new friend, a Chinese guy named Andrew who was also visiting Bangkok for a few days. We exchanged numbers and promised to meet in the city in the days to come.
Usually a mundane airport transfer is nothing to write about, but this one was rather exciting, as far as bus rides go. What should have taken 30-40 minutes ended up nearly two hours. The bus we took was the A4, cost about 50 Thai Baht. A few miles outside the airport sat four police officers on bicycles in the middle of the freeway causing a standstill. If the people of India and Sri Lanka were unhelpful, the other Thai passengers couldn’t have been nicer to us. One of them explained to us that Prime Minister Modi of India and President Xi of China were having a meeting in Bangkok to discuss their current trade agreement. It was unknown who exactly was occupying the roads at this time, but certainly this was the reason for the delay.
Upon arrival at the Baan Nampetch Hostel Bangkok, we deposited our bags and headed off for a casual stroll through Khaosan Road, the Über-famous 1km long road packed with budget accommodations for backpackers, tattoo parlors, street food vendors bars, restaurants, travel agencies, internet cafes, and massage parlors.
We settled for some pad thai from a street vendor and dined on a curb outside of the local Chabad house.
DAY TWO
Usually we make a concentrated effort to pick hotels that have free breakfast. There are enough mini hurdles to overcome on a daily basis while living on the road. Breakfast should not be one of them. Our hotel rested on the side of a peaceful slow moving river with hostels on both sides.
We had a list of locations/events in the city that we would like to visit on the next few days, knowing there are simply too many interesting places to cover them all. The first stop was the Chatuchak Weekend Market. Over 15,000 diverse stalls filled with clothes, souvenirs, flowers, household appliances, and various foods have been peddling their goods in the same place since the market opened in 1948. It was also discovered recently that Chatuchak is an underground center for illegal wildlife sales, specifically Threatened bird species.
Thai Boxing, otherwise known as Muay Thai, is known as the combat "art of eight limbs," as a combination of fists, elbows, shins, and knees can be used to strike an opponent. There are daily competitions in various venues in Bangkok for the locals to attend and gamble on. It has become somewhat of a tourist attraction as well.
The bouts that we attended was in the Channel 7 Boxing Stadium hosted in a muggy backroom capable of safely hosting 250-300 people. The capacity was easily double that.
The entrance was surprisingly free, but they do have a nice little scam running on the outside. For no reason whatsoever, there is a "dress code" of long pants and collared shirts that is strictly enforced. It doesn't need be fancy clothing, just pants and a collar. There is no mention of this beforehand to foreigners, yet all of the locals know. Outside the gate they have a few clothing stands where second and third hand clothing is sold for crazy amounts for tourists who want to enter. As a result you see dozens of goofy faced tourist with outrageous bright colored polo shirts and elephant pants.
Afterwards we hopped on the city metro got off at the Thailand Cultural Centre station to the Ratchada Rot Fai Train Night Market to meet up with our new friend Andrew from the airplane and his girlfriend who had flown in from China to meet him. Online we read about a place that served rainbow grilled cheese sandwiches so we had to check them out for ourselves!
DAY 3
For 31 long years Nadine has lived a perpetual fear of snakes. Like deathly afraid. With a trip to the Snake Farm(Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute), we were hoping today would be the day her fears were allayed. Built originally to educate the Thai people on how to treat a venomous snake bite, now they partner with the World Health Organization to produce anti-venom serums. A museum and snake show are open to the public.
While waiting in line for 20 minutes to hold and take pictures with a 10 foot yellow python, Nadine was slowly building up the courage. Once we arrived at the front of the line, Nadine took a deep breath and proclaimed that not only did she want to take a couple's picture, but would also take a solo shot with her and the snake. Ben had his doubts. If a picture is worth a thousand words...
Ben handled it like a pro....
Next to the farm is Lumpini Park, a grassy getaway in the middle of the tumultuous Bangkok city, not unlike Central Park in NYC. On the walk over, we were halted by the police for ten minutes as member of the Thai Royal Family. We may or may not have caught a glimpse of a few of them, tough to tell.
Lumpini Park is just as beautiful as advertised. The weather was drizzling, but we had experienced monsoon weather in Goa so we couldn't be bother with a bit of rain. The park is also home to roughly 400 monitor lizards, a six foot long, 100 pound reptile that is indigenous to the regions. We were lucky to spot two of them.
DAY 3
Aside from the partying and debauchery, Bangkok is filled with Buddhist Temples, called wats. There are hundreds in the city, each more beautiful than the last.
The third day we decided we would take a self walking tour of the famous sites, starting with the The Grad Palace. For inexplicable reasons, they also decide to impose a dress code, so once again were on the outside looking in, unless we wanted to buy or rent long sleeves, this time 5x the price as the boxing stadium. For the life of us we couldn't figure out why this was necessary, considering the Palace is not a holy site. Once we realized that the locals do not have to pay to get in, we chalked the dress up to a "tourist tax." Not fair, but it is what it is. We would return later with the proper attire.
(We did not take this picture)
Next door to the Palace was an exhibition of the Royal Barge. Even though his father passed away three years ago in 2016, out of respect the new king Rama X postponed his coronation until May of this year. The coronation procession lasts for months consisting of a number of ceremonies, including the Royal Barge Procession, which has both political and religious significance. Rather than falling short in describing how it unfolds, here is a link to read:
Unfortunately for us, one of the events happened the month before we came, and another the month after we left.
Inside of the exhibition, pictures and videos showed the history of the Royal Barge, dating back over 700 years. Also we watched a live show of volunteers acting out the process of the transition from one king to the next, the reaction of the people, and the Royal Fleet cruising down the river.
We ended up skipping out on visiting the Royal Palace out of principle, as we have strong objectives to paying money to visit Royal houses in general. A quick Google search shows that the Royal Family of Thailand is worth over 30 billion dollars, so Lord knows they don't need our petty change. If they want to share their culture with us, share it. The residents of Thailand don't have to pay to enter, so why should we? For $16 a person, which is a lot of money in Thailand, we can think of many better ways to spend it.
Two bowls of pad thai later, we made our way to the well known Giant Swing (Wat Suthat).
We spent the rest of. the evening visiting Wat Ratchabophit and Wat Pho, home of the famous Reclining Buddha.
DAY 4
Even though there is a gross difference between the prices of street food and restaurants, the quality of the food is similar. In our opinion, we think the street food is more authentic and genuine. The menus of the restaurants have all sorts of western foods and delicacies that aren't consumed by the locals. Plus, the street food is delicious.
On the fourth and final day, our legs were rather sore from trekking throughout the city. On average we were probably averaging 6 miles walking a day over the span of 6-8 hours. It doesn't seem like much, but there is a lot of moving and very little sitting and resting. We've had long, full days.
Within minutes of leaving the hostel, we somehow found ourselves boarded a private ferry on the river hired by a tourist group. The dockworker instructed us to hop on board, but as soon as we did, a Thai tour guide hustled to remove us. Unfortunately for her, the boat took off and we got a free ride down the river, having no idea where or when we were getting off. 45 minutes later we exited in south Bangkok, close to Chinatown. With a few hours to kill, and nowhere in particular to be, we wandered hither and thither until we reached our hostel to retrieve our bags and head off to the airport to enjoy the priority lounge!
Sometimes it's nice to get off the beaten track and see the city life. We found a local wholesale flower market, cheap street food, and stores geared towards daily life as opposed to the high price, low quality touristy shops.
Overall, we enjoyed our time in Bangkok. We didn't find it to be the outlandish, extravagant legendary party town it was cracked up to be, but then again, we weren't looking for it. Rather we found it to be like many modern cities with an ancient history. A few dated buildings remain, but for the most part, it's not different than any other metropolis.
Next stop Cambodia!
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