Bangkok, Thailand

After an amazingly easy 4 hour flight from Nanchang to Bangkok, we arrived energised and ready to explore. One huge plus of living in Nanchang is that there’s an airport! Always in Korea we had a 4-6 hour trip to get to the airport, and due to school finishing times had to stay overnight before the flight. But not this time!

As this was our 4th visit to Bangkok, we were very relaxed as we had no “to do” or “to see” lists. (Except for drink Chang beer and eat mountains of amazing food!)

After a bit of stress at the airport due to our Chinese bankcards not working as they should, we headed to our hotel. It was well situated to shops, malls and restaurants but far enough off the main streets to be quiet. Oh and it had 4 cats 🙂 purrfect!

Our first night we headed out for our first taste of yummy Thai food in quite some time, washing it down with some well deserved local brews.

Our first full day we set off on a leisurely pace from our hotel and explored the city letting our noses and ears lead us. Having left a Chinese winter only the day before we set off in our shorts and tees with our pasty white limbs shocking the locals. We explored new areas of the city and often found ourselves asking “have we been here before?”

With no real direction we managed to find the markets as they set up their items for the afternoon. It’s fascinating to see one stall selling children’s clothes, the next selling porn DVDs and the next selling socks. There is no rhyme or reason why each stall is where it is, except perhaps that the wife can buy socks and kids clothes, while the husband buys porn. Something for the whole family…?

We continued on found that there was a tourist expo being set up at one of the main parks. We took note of the details and planned to return the next day when festivities had started. On the return journey we found ourselves diving into the much needed air conditioning at several malls. Both were holding food fairs which were interesting if not a little hectic.

The following day we headed again to the park and explored the hundreds of tented stalls selling fascinating food and local handcrafted wears. The park was set up with different areas for the different regions of Thailand each of which had a stage area where groups were performing music and dancing. It was fascinating to see and we spent sometime exploring each region. We also enjoyed watching the squirrels and their acrobatics, but got somewhat freaked out when we realised that the metre long monitor lizards could climb into the trees. Yikes!

Our last morning in Bangkok we needed to get to the train station from our hotel. Even though our backpacks are considerably smaller than most at less than 10kgs each we decided to grab a bus to the station rather than walk in the heat. So after waiting for about 15 minutes for the 73 bus at the bus stop we jumped on what we thought was the right bus. Well it turns out we were wrong and along with two young Korean girls we were shoed off the bus at the next stop. Luckily for us a lovely local helped us get on the correct bus and we easily made it to the train station.

It was probably the least eventful first few days of any trip that we have had, which was just what we needed!! Next up: Ayutthaya.