(day 3) bangkok

Started the morning off bright and early cuz we're motivated travelers (jet lag). Planned to go check out a temple before all the tourists got there, but wanted to grab a tiny breakfast to settle our stomachs. Got this little bread at 7-11, it's just wonderful soft delicious asian bread with butter spread in between! They heat it for you if you want.

We wanted to go see Wat Pho, about a 20-30 min drive across Bangkok. Unbeknownst to us, most cab drivers aren't willing to take you that far during rush hour, since the way the meter increments, they profit most from distance traveled, less so from time spent driving. One guy laughed us right back out of his cab. After some trouble, found a guy that offered a flat 300 baht fee ($10).

Wat Pho is the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, it's smaller than the temple from yesterday, and much more enjoyable to see, I thought. The Buddha himself is HUGE.

He looks pretty chill.

There was a line of bowls down the length of the hall, you can pay 20baht to get a little container of copper discs. Then you go down the row and drop a disc into each bowl. Again having done little to no cultural/historical research, I have no idea what the significance of this is. :) Just saw it being done.

Pretty fountain/garden arrangement on the temple grounds. 

The style of this temple is really different from the last one, less iridescent shiny glass pieces, lots of colorful opaque clay bits. I think the last one was more "magnificent", but not really my taste. I like the style of this one better.

The geometric shapes...the repeated patterns and tessellations on each spire, and then the repeated arrangements of the spires themselves is just really mesmerizing and cool.

I don't know why but I like this picture a lot. As you can see, much emptier than the last one.

There were also many courtyards that were lined with Buddhas. The Buddhas all looked slightly different; different materials, faces, sitting positions....

So picturesque!

After another couple hours of poking around, we thought we'd take a ferry to a different area of the city for street food (again somewhat randomly picked).

Figuring out the ferry system was.......not so easy. Found the pier easily enough, but it was not straightforward to tell how much and whom to pay to go where, and the hardest part was figuring out what boat to get on. There are different "colors" of routes, and the boats on those routes will have that color flag tied to them. We weren't sure and just tried to board every boat that came by -- they ask where you're going when you get on and if it's not right they tell you to get off and go back to the pier.

We definitely attempted to board at least 3 different boats that turned out to be Korean tour boats.

Finally got on our boat! They're quite large. They are not just tourist ferries, many locals use them to commute every day. It was suffocatingly hot outside, but as soon as we got on board and got moving, the air became really comfortable.

Nice scenic views, there was even a person at the front that explained some of the buildings.

Disembarked and started walking. Noticed this cool dilapidated building and we were wondering about it. It's a huge towering skyscraper right in the middle of the city, looks like an expensive housing development, but there was graffiti all over it, making it look abandoned. Very dystopic and cool!

Dylan did some research later, apparently two such buildings were constructed, one was finished, the other was abandoned, and people could go in and take pictures for a while until some foreigner committed suicide in there. Now they keep guards posted around the building, some say you can bribe them to let you in and poke around, but the building is very unstable.

i <3 bkk covered in bird shit.

Stopped by McDonald's to use the bathroom. Dipping parade!!

Found a random restaurant called Queen of Curry to try. It did look a bit touristy but eh who cares. Got some sweet fruity alcoholic blended drinks.

Red curry with duck! Was pretty good, no Osha Thai though.

After lunch, back to Airbnb again to cool off, swim, shower, etc. This became a regular pattern for us throughout the trip, but most in Bangkok because it's just so damn hot and uncomfortable.

Went to another street food area for dinner. This one looked the most like what I expected of
"street food" (based on how it is in Taiwan).

Shared a chicken skewer, it was amazing!

More street food stands. There weren't a whole lot, maybe like 10 - 15 total. I don't know!! I know if you just keep comparing you'll never be happy, but it really wasn't what I had expected or hoped for in street food.

Mango with sticky rice stand (didn't try it).

Lots of stands selling roti (both sweet and savory). Thai cuisine, like most SE Asian cuisine, gets a lot of influence from its neighboring countries. I think the roti trend probably is from Malaysia?

Chicken curry roti, it was pretty good.

Got a seafood stirfry from another stand, again not bad but not amazing.

For our last night in Bangkok we decided to go check out a rooftop bar. There are a number of them in Bangkok, most at the top of fancy hotels or skyscrapers. The one we went to is called Octave 8. There were several levels, one is a rooftop restaurant, the others were more of a bar/chill space with a DJ. The view was amazing, drinks were good (but of course prices are raised cuz you're paying for the location).

Dylan getting drinks at the bar.

All in all? Bangkok was...interesting. Not what I expected. I usually love big cities, love the public transportation and the convenience. I did not love Bangkok. I only had a few days there so I admittedly did not get to experience much, but the humid temperatures, crowdedness, inconvenience of the pubtrans system, constant odor of sewage (it was really bad), dirtiness.....I don't know. There were a lot of things that were really cool, lot of stuff that was very unique and I'm of course really glad I went! And I haven't written it off entirely. But from my scant 2.5 days of looking around, Bangkok is definitely not a favorite so far. :) Hoping the rest of the trip will look up!

(day 2) bangkok

Started the morning out really early, went by BTS (Thailand's MRT, actually, they have a BTS AND an MRT, they are operated separately, have different metro cards, and don't connect, making the pubtrans system really inconvenient and one of the less convenient ones I've used) to Victory Monument. Here it is, it's kind of boring.

Stopped by a random stand (we were poached by a hawker) for breakfast (not pictured). I got boat noodles, which is kind of like Thai beef noodle soup. They're called boat noodles because they used to be sold on boats to other people doing business in the canals.

7-11's have all these interesting drinks for sale, like Ovaltine and milk tea and Thai iced tea!

Some have Slurpee machines.

Took a cab to Wat Phra Kaew, or Temple of the Emerald Buddha, which is also connected to the Grand Palace. The entire complex was HUGE and absolutely inundated with tourists. We may as well have been in Seoul with the number of Korean tourists that were there.

Though we weren't completely inappropriately addressed, it turns out both leggings and shorts are unacceptable, so we had to borrow sarongs/trousers before we were allowed to go in. They rent them out for free but you have to go through this process of putting down a deposit and then getting it back, plus there were tons of people that were wearing sleeveless tops or dresses, so it took a while. Not a good start to the experience.

The temple itself was really cool. The architecture, ornamentation, colors, grandeur etc. were all brand new to me and it was really amazing to see. However. The sheer volume of tourists plus the intense humid heat put a real damper on the experience for me, and I had a hard time getting into without feeling suffocated and uncomfortable. I think I would always go to a quiet "second tier" tourist attraction than a crowded "absolutely must see" tourist attraction.  

Closeup of some of the gold tiling. The gold and glass reflecting in the sun was really brilliant and magnificent.

Closeup of a column, those silver bits have mirrors on them that reflect light back at you so the whole temple complex looks like it's made of thousands of sparkling jewels.

There were also little cute landscaping scenes like this scattered around.

I'm not sure what the significance of any of the buildings, spires, and shapes are, but there are a lot of these pointy things. They're not always gold. Seems like each temple goes with a color scheme and sticks to it. I like the little guys at the bottom holding it up.

Face cracks me up.

See how I tried to cut off all the tourist heads at the bottom with my framing. I wanted to do it in real life too.

Stayed a couple of hours, then when we were nice and sweaty, got a tuk tuk to take us to some random food cafeteria that I'd read about (didn't know much about it, just needed a place to go).

The tuk tuk ride was really fun!! There's just something about riding in an open air vehicle that is so free and exhilarating. It's not about speed, cuz you're only going like 30 mph, it's just that you're way more connected to the environment while you're traveling I guess.

The cafeteria place. Big, not a lot of people, not a lot of English.

They bring you a cart of drinks that you can choose from (and you have to pay for whatever you pick ofc). We picked this shocking green Fanta drink and basically chugged it. So hot in Bangkok.

The food was only ok, I think we just got one small thing of curry and shared it. Glad we didn't order more.

Went back to Airbnb and basked in the sweet sweet AC. Used the rooftop infinity pool (seems like all apartment buildings have one in Bangkok).

After cooling off, headed back out again for (you guessed it) more food! Had a specific restaurant in mind that specializes in papaya salad and northern Thailand (Isaan) cuisine.

But on the way, had to stop and try this street food stand that popped up right at the corner of the street. They didn't have a stove or anything so I guess they just cooked it at home and then set up shop somewhere.

We got an order of the eggrolls for 35 baht ($1). The stuff on the right I think is for making dessert, like when you get Vietnamese drinks and it has a bunch of crap in it? Or maybe old school Taiwanese bing dessert? Something like that...

Got a red bull from 7-11, Thailand has like the "real" or "original" Red Bull or something, contains some ingredient that we're not allowed to use at home so everyone says to try it when you go to Thailand. It's really cheap there! Tastes the same.

The eggrolls were vegetarian and they gave us a thing of sauce. It was sooooo good. Dylan maintains it was the best thing we'd eaten so far (and maybe on the whole trip?)

Kind of a larb salad thing.

Papaya salad (som tum)! This was my favorite dish but also deceptively the spiciest so I couldn't have a lot of it.

A bamboo salad dish. Everything we got was kind of similar, all pretty good though.

After having a ton of salads, Dylan wasn't feeling great so we headed back. Everyone says that you will get upset stomach when you visit Thailand -- and it's true. We both did at different points in the trip. The spiciness doesn't help, either. Bring Immodium! Or buy it in Thailand, it's cheaper.

(day 1) bangkok

Airbnb room near Nana BTS station. It was super hot in Bangkok for the 3 days we were there, so having a room with AC that you can blast all day (I know, wasteful heathens, we are) was a godsend. 

7-11 has a surprisingly wide selection of alcohol! Though they only sell it at certain times -- I think sales close at like 10pm or 11pm so if you're planning on having a beer at home at night, better pick it up early.

Lays is doing some funny marketing thing where all their bags have caricature mouths on them, and the commercials show people eating Lays and then matching the mouths to their face so it looks like they're grinning.

First meal in Thailand! Pad Thai from a super sketch, super dirty cart. I figured there's no point in babying my GI tract -- bring on the bacteria!

It was...super delicious, and only 60 baht = $1.50.