Arriving at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport at 6am on Thursday 4 December, we were one of the first flights to land since it was re-opened after the all days of protesting. The airport was eerily quiet but we had no trouble and actually felt perfectly safe during our entire stay in Thailand. At the airport we found the luggage storage department and proceeded to repack various bags so that we weren’t carrying a bunch of unnecessary stuff (ie winter clothes) around with us for the duration of our holiday.
We took a bus to Koh San Road which is a well-known street where all of the businesses (cafes, bars, clothing stores, beauty parlours) cater to the English speaking backpacker crowd. We quickly found a well-priced hotel and (even though you get told not to) slept from 10am to 2pm before dragging our butts out to explore. We had some lovely Thai food for lunch and then had our first tuk tuk experience, I think they’re kinda fun! The driver took us to a tourist booking shop, we were a bit weary of getting ripped off but the guy who served us was a kiwi and all the licenses and shop certificates seemed to be in order so we went with it. Thankfully it paid off and he was very helpful in giving us ideas and information so we could really nut out what we wanted to do and we left there an hour later with a significantly lighter wallet but with a jam-packed itinerary.
A lot of friends had told us to get out of Bangkok as soon as we could but we actually didn’t mind the place. There was just so much to see and as it was our first Asian country we were in awe of everything. Things like riding down a busy street in a tuk tuk and seeing an elephant on the side of the road are just mind blowing. It was the King’s birthday on 5 December so all the streets were decorated with banners, streamers and photos of the king. There was a real party feel about the place and we wandered through a concert ground watching lovely dressed up dance groups, kick-boxing demo’s, and saw lots of food stalls… including deep-fried insects and dodgy looking meat.
We took a bus to Koh San Road which is a well-known street where all of the businesses (cafes, bars, clothing stores, beauty parlours) cater to the English speaking backpacker crowd. We quickly found a well-priced hotel and (even though you get told not to) slept from 10am to 2pm before dragging our butts out to explore. We had some lovely Thai food for lunch and then had our first tuk tuk experience, I think they’re kinda fun! The driver took us to a tourist booking shop, we were a bit weary of getting ripped off but the guy who served us was a kiwi and all the licenses and shop certificates seemed to be in order so we went with it. Thankfully it paid off and he was very helpful in giving us ideas and information so we could really nut out what we wanted to do and we left there an hour later with a significantly lighter wallet but with a jam-packed itinerary.
A lot of friends had told us to get out of Bangkok as soon as we could but we actually didn’t mind the place. There was just so much to see and as it was our first Asian country we were in awe of everything. Things like riding down a busy street in a tuk tuk and seeing an elephant on the side of the road are just mind blowing. It was the King’s birthday on 5 December so all the streets were decorated with banners, streamers and photos of the king. There was a real party feel about the place and we wandered through a concert ground watching lovely dressed up dance groups, kick-boxing demo’s, and saw lots of food stalls… including deep-fried insects and dodgy looking meat.
On Friday we went to a snake farm, which was free entry because of King’s birthday! They put on a bit of a demonstration and at the end we were able to hold the snake around our necks!!! It was so freaky but I’m really glad I did it. That afternoon we made our way to Siam Square and HBK which are shopping centres in the new part of Bangkok. On our way to the train station Niki stopped in for his first Thai massage…he loved them! We misjudged our time a bit so I was majorly stressing that we would miss our 7.30pm sleeper train to Chiang Mai but luckily we got there with 10 mins to spare, whew!
Unfortunately I haven't got the pics relating to this post off our memory card (due to the drowning of our camera), but wanted to get going so here it is without the snake pic sorry
No comments:
Post a Comment