Bangkok *sorry for the delay*

We arrived in Bangkok at around 5 o’clock in the afternoon and Wang’s sister Jane had arranged for a car to drive us to her apartment complex in the city. She lives in a beautiful apartment complex with a large gate and guards in full uniform on duty at all times ever ready to solute you while clicking their heals together (I couldn’t get enough of it). Her apartment was an amazing 3 bedroom unit with a great view overlooking a large pond of the neighboring convention center and beyond to the city skyline. The place was huge and shortly after we settled in Jane returned home from work. We showered up and headed out for dinner. Jane wanted to try a place she had never been which served authentic Thai food. Nothing like jumping right into the local cuisine. We all ordered Thai iced teas which are like sweet tea with milk and are freaking delicious. Then in true Asian style dinner was ordered and eaten for the table, family style. I have gotten very used to and fond of this style because I can try all the different foods. The Thai people however do not use chopsticks but instead use a fork at knife. This was a slight disappointment for me as I had honed my chopstick skills quite well over the past few weeks. Dinner was very good and after it was only a quick cab ride to the local night market called the Suan Lum Night Bazaar.
This was unlike any other night market in Asia that we had been to. The first major difference was that you could actually walk around the market without being pushed and shoved everywhere. Another major difference is that there were things besides food that I was generally interested in purchasing. Everything from candle holders to shirts and shoes and let’s not forget about the ever popular knock off bags and watches. We walked around the market for quite some time and we found out quickly another large difference between this market and others we had been too, the vendors weren’t pushy and rude. They still excessively markup all prices only to be negotiated down to something reasonable and cheap by any western standard but at least they aren’t pushy. I ended up buying a collared shirt for 600 baht or 17 us collars, Jane fell in love with an awesome 9 piece original painting (which she later bought) and James escaped without being sucked in by the low priced goods. After spending several hours in the market, it was time to head back. But not before we got home we walked down Soy Cowboy, a popular red light district road in Bangkok, a city very well known for such. While you can image exactly what this road looks like… scantily clad Thai women soliciting sex, nasty white guys taking the bait and to our pleasant surprise elephants at each end for the road that were to provided added entertainment. After our trip down soy cowboy we headed back to decide what to do with our next day. We also were having our laundry done by Jane’s maid the next day. We couldn’t help but love this little convenience. Thanks Jane’s Maid!
Morning came a little later for us and we took the sky train to the last station which was the main dock on the river. I forgot to mention it is about 90 degrees and sunny, a very pleasant improvement from a couple days before in bitterly cold Beijing. We purchased two all cay tickets for what could only be called a water bus that was going to take us up and down the river seeing different areas of the city. There were about 13 different docks all with different things to see. The boats were very interesting, long and narrow, extremely old and pollution machines. They did the job though transporting us and probably 40 to 80 people on any given boatload, from dock to dock. We decided to take the boat all the way north and work our way down. The first stop was Bang Lam Phu and it was a backpacker’s paradise with several streets lined with shops, restaurants and bars. The main road was called Khaosan Road, hippies were everywhere and we loved it. We spent the better part of the early afternoon in this area checking out the sights and taking in all of the people watching.
We hopped back on the boat and headed to another dock which had the major tourist attraction the Grand Palace. It was a place of worship like other Asian temples we had seen but Thai temples are very glamorous. With extremely large structures glittering with colorful reflective stones. It was an amazing site one which I could never do justice through words. You will have to check the photos online. After this palace we took the water bus to another palace a few stops down the river. It was similar to the first but was known for a giant Buddha that was ‘reclined’. Lastly, we hit up the stop that the flower market was supposed to be at so we could buy an orchid for Jane. I say supposedly because it took us about 20 minutes to find this place as we walked through a large vegetable market before finding the flower market further than we expected off the river. It used to be a fish market but with such a foul smell it was converted into the current flower market. It was several major roads just lined with flowers for sale. I don’t know how anyone can make any money just selling flowers on the road so I assume they must be exported to other places to be sold.
That night we went to dinner with Jane at Curries and More and had a delicious meal of yup you guessed it, curry dishes. The food was great but we were instructed to save room for their even better desserts. This must be what they mean when they said ‘More’. After dinner we walked back and noticed that an intersection had been completely halted and our foot traffic to the sky train stopped. This was all in preparation for what Jane told us was a royal family member’s motorcade. They stop all traffic for any member of the royal family traveling through the streets. I thought this was very interesting to see but it was slightly anti-climatic.
The second full day was very relaxed day that started even more slowly than the first. We decided to head out and grab lunch first and then head to china town and check it out. Kind of ironic we know but it was a very popular area. We had read in our travel book that a good, cheap restaurant near Jane’s place was only a short walk away. Well it turns out that it takes an extremely helpful local to help two smart, capable and educated Americans find this place. We wandered around for the better part of 30 minutes before an older Thai man, probably in his 60’s, approached us and in decent English asked if he could help us find something. We explained to him where we were trying to go and what restaurant we expected to find there and he graciously gave is directions. When I want to thank him in my overly smiley, touristy way… he looked right at me, smiled and said, welcome to Thailand. This exchange is a perfect example of how pleasant and welcoming the Thai people are to tourists. It was very evident that a large industry in Bangkok is tourism. After lunch we hopped on a sky train to China town which to us seemed like a slight knockoff from where we had just been. While we were in Chinatown, Jane messaged Wang and said that she was going to take us to Vertigo for drinks that night around dinner time so we could see the sunset over the city. So we headed back and got showered up for drinks. Wang and I took 2-3 showers a day in Bangkok because of the heat.
Vertigo was on the roof of a very large building in Bangkok and was an extremely swanky bar and restaurant. So swanky in fact that Wang and I were underdressed in our shorts so they gave us both a pair of long pants to wear. They made us look about five times worse than the shorts but policy is policy right…???? This was made even more comical when we realized that several other men had been wearing ‘rental’ pants making a portion of their clientele look like waiters. And the icing on the classy cake was the gross, old, white men with Thai dates. Wink Wink. But appearances aside, the bar was beautiful with great drinks and snacks, decor and amazing views of the city. We also knew we were in Thailand because the railings were probably three feet tall. Anything like this in the states would have an abundant list of lawsuits on their hands. After drinks we went back to the night market were there were plenty of Thai places to choose from for dinner. We had dinner and walked around the market again. I again bought a collared shirt, Wang got a three piece picture and Jane finally got that painting she loved. The painter was so beside herself with excitement over her large sale to Jane that we all couldn’t help but be excited.
On our last day we went to Fred Thompson’s house. The man who was credited with reviving the silk market in Thailand was an American and his house is crawling with tourist. It really was a very beautiful place. After our guided tour of the Thompson house from our very pleasant English speaking Thai woman, we sat down at the café on site for a drink. Fred Thompson’s house sat on a very narrow waterway with water taxis flying up and down it all day long. I couldn’t help but want to see the river and jump on one of these boats. We timidly got on a water taxi and headed down the river not really knowing exactly where we were heading. We ended up getting off at the right dock so we could walk to the Golden Mount, a very famous monastery in the city. It sat atop a large hill overlooking the city and we climbed up to take a look around. It was a great discovery and on another 90 degree and sunny day was the perfect thing for us to do that afternoon. After the Golden Mount we hopped back on the water taxi to take us to another stop near Siam Square, a local shopping area full of little boutiques and other things to see. We walked around for a little bit and headed back for the apartment. We got back and showered up, grabbed a quick bite for dinner with Jane down the street and then packed up and got ready for Jane’s fondue party that night. The party started at around 8 and we could only stay for a short while before we had to hop a cab to the airport for Europe.
Jane was an extremely gracious host and we could not have asked for more comfortable accommodations. The weather was amazing and a very welcome change from what we were used to. The food and the people were among the best and most pleasant of any place we had been in Asia. Lastly it was very inexpensive compared to anything in the west. This is why I would strongly recommend anyone looking for a slightly more exotic place to visit for a warm vacation to consider Thailand.
With Taiwan, Japan, China, Hong Kong and Thailand visited in Asia, our 13 hour flight to Paris was the only thing separating us from our second leg of the trip in Europe.