Bangkok Bonus: Pak Khlong Talat

As I mentioned earlier today, my absolute favorite thing about Bangkok was the Pak Khlong Talat nightly market and its kaleidescope of colors.  So, because I couldn’t choose just one to show you what it is like to be surrounded by flowers, here’s a bonus post for your Monday:

12 reasons to love Bangkok and counting…

I love Bangkok. I know some people hate it. They say it is crowded, noisy, and smoggy. Maybe this is so, but coming off a month in India, Bangkok seemed positively calm, orderly and clean. Bangkok reminded me of an Asian New York City – no matter how many times you go, you can always find somewhere new to explore and something new to do. It being our first time in Bangkok, we barely scratched the surface in our week in the city, but coming up with reasons to love Bangkok was not hard. Bangkok, we’ll be back.

1. Bangkok is where you can get things DONE. We had a big to-do list in Bangkok and accomplished everything with ease. As compared to say, India, where it took us four days just to buy a train ticket out of Delhi. In a matter of days, we finished Christmas shopping for our families; shipped said presents home; bought Christmas cards featuring a monk with sunglasses and who-knows-what sort of message in Thai; bought new shorts for Sean and a new dress for me; got Sean’s hairs cut; replenished our toiletries; bought guidebooks (at a discount, of course) for our southeast Asian travels; and got my camera cleaned at an official Canon center in the MBK mall for a fraction of what it would cost at home.

2. Bangkok is modern. Although other cities in southeast Asia can fool you into thinking they are modernized and sleek, eventually something crazy happens to make you remember that you are in the middle of an area that operates with inefficiencies, corruptions, crazy rigged vehicles and squat toilets. Not that this description couldn’t be applied to Thailand, but for the most part, Bangkok can hold its own better than its regional neighbors against other world-class international metropolises. There’s something comforting about knowing that no matter where you are in southeast Asia, as long as you get back to Bangkok you can accomplish tasks (see number one), experience modern conveniences you can’t find elsewhere, and obtain healthcare if needed on par with what you would receive at home.

3. Bangkok has movies galore. Nothing erases homesickness quite like watching a Hollywood film in the theater. Although we’ve tried to catch good movies on the road before, our timing was never quite right. In Bangkok, however, we had our choice of films from a plethora of theaters, prompting us to go twice in one week. (We saw Eat, Pray, Love and the Pittsburgh-based Next Three Days, if you are wondering. We also caught the Social Network for $2 the following week in Chiang Mai). Just like home, movies in Thailand come complete with giant popcorns and Cokes. Quite unlike home, movies are cheap (about $4), seats are assigned, and everyone gives a standing ovation to the King before the movie starts.

4. Bangkok has cheap, tasty street food… From our favorite pad thai in Thailand for under a dollar, to stir-fries galore, to fresh fruit stands, to fried pancakes with bananas and Skippy peanut butter, to mango and sticky rice, Bangkok is yummy.

5. …and Bangkok has street laundry. We paid way too much at our guesthouse for our first load of laundry before we discovered the coin washing machines randomly stuck outside shops and homes. Awesome.

6. Bangkok has fabulous, cheap massages. $4 neck-and-shoulder massages. Need I say more?

7. Bangkok is shiny and pretty. Whether illuminated by sunshine or street lamps, the wats in Bangkok positively shimmer.

8. Bangkok has a BIG Buddha. I’ve decided that I like my Buddhas big. The bigger, the better, and Bangkok has one of the biggest in Thailand. The reclining Buddha at Wat Pho is HUGE. I was memorized by his giant marble-inlay feet, relaxed posture, and melodic pings of coins hitting metal as Buddhist devotees circled the room.

9. Bangkok has nooks and crannies. While dodging the zany traffic on Bangkok’s main streets and street vendors on the sidewalks can drive you bonkers, the sois (side streets) are quiet and peaceful. You’ll find families living in their shops, children playing in the streets, budding guitarists, tropical flowers, tailless kitties, and you-never-know-what-else in the sois.

10. Bangkok has shopping. From everything under the sun at the enormous Saturday market, to cheap knock-offs on the street, to fancy stores at the malls on Silom Road, to up and coming designers in Little Siam, you can shop until you drop in Bangkok.

11. Bangkok has waterways. I loved discovering random canals lined with tropical greenery tucked between streets, and loved even more that Thais put their rivers to good use by running water taxis up and down to avoid the congested streets.

12. Bangkok has flowers. If there is one thing that makes me happy, it’s colorful flowers, and Bangkok’s nightly market, Pak Khlong Talat, has them in abundance. Strolling through the market, surrounded by tropical flowers on all sides, made me feel like I was in a kaleidescope. The market was hands down my favorite part of Bangkok.  I loved Pak Khlong Talat so much, I’m saving my photos from the market for its own post.

Silom Road at night

A Bangkok canal

Shiny wat

The fancy mall, Siam Paragon

Little Siam

A random soi in our 'hood

Now that's a big Buddha.

Medium sized Buddhas, but bonus points for having a bunch of them.

Street food!

View from Roof View Place during the King's Birthday celebrations

Thailand is Awesome: Day One

To say we were eager to get to Thailand would be an understatement.  Finally, a country where our champagne tastes matches our beer budget.  It is, without question, the mecca for budget travelers.  I have never seen a round-the-world itinerary that didn’t include Thailand.  When I’d read about Thailand in other people’s travel blogs, I was sure it had to be too good to be true.  There had to be embellishment to the stories of cheap prices.  The rooms really couldn’t be that nice.  The street food had to be sketchy.  The people couldn’t be that friendly.  The sun couldn’t shine that much.  It didn’t take long for us to realize that everything we had heard was true.  There’s a reason Thailand is on everyone’s list and it is because it is awesome.

I knew it was going to be awesome right from the start. Our day started with watching the most amazing sunrise over Thailand on our overnight flight. Although I couldn’t accurately capture the colors of the sunrise in a picture, I will always remember the way the sun created bands of light in order of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. I stared at the colors until they were out of sight.

When we landed in Bangkok, the sun was shining and everything looked clean, bright, and modern. Our taxi driver took us straight to our chosen hotel (Roof View Place) without any detours or trouble. We spent some time just marveling at how clean and bright our room was. While this particular room at $26 was the most expensive we’d have in Thailand (not counting Santa’s upgrade on Christmas), it had anything we could want – free wifi, a big, filling free breakfast, free water, and free information about travelling around. As we’d come to learn, you get a lot for your money in Thailand. Nice rooms can be had even for less than $10, and spending just another $5 or $10 can really up the ante.

By the end of our first day in Thailand, we’d discovered our favorite hole in the wall pad thai place serving the tastiest pad thai we’ve had to date for under a dollar (yes, it is true – dinner for under a dollar!), ate fresh tropical fruit, also under a dollar (cut right before you under sanitary conditions!), and had a neck and shoulder massage for $4 each. Yep, Thailand had us at day one, and still has us. We exhausted our 30 day visa and plan to return later in our trip – we suspect as good as it was so far, the best may be to come.  There’s still beaches to sit on, after all. The only knock on Thailand is that it can lull you into a routine* and you have to share the country with all those other tourists and ex-pats who love it too.

*(I know, I know.  Isn’t that what we wanted after India?  During our travels, it seems when things are uncomfortable, they are usually more exciting.  When things are comfortable, boredom can creep up – albeit a different type of boredom from the work/eat/sleep/lather/rinse/repeat routine at home.  Just goes to show – no place is perfect, whether you are home or away, and you have to enjoy and appreciate the good parts no matter where you are.  Luckily, in Thailand, there are a lot of good parts.)

Relaxing in our room at Roof View Place, basking in the clean sheets and sunshine

Despite eating it multiple times, I didn't get a great photo of our favorite pad thai. Don't worry, if our travels route us through Bangkok again as I suspect they will, we'll be back. This is a similar glass noodle version by the same lady.

Not us, but you get the point: cheap massages are everywhere. We preferred to not get ours right in public though.

Merry Christmas, Thai style!

This is the first Christmas we’ve been away from home, which means it is also the first Christmas we’ve spent in a warm place. Forecast for Chiang Mai for Christmas Day: 86 and sunny. Forecast for Pittsburgh: 29 and snow showers.

Christmas is the one day where we’d rather be in the cold. This year, there’s no Christmas cookies; no decorating the tree; no family get-togethers; no 24 hours of The Christmas Story; and no presents for Fabulous on Christmas morning. Every year, I start the holiday season off by playing my favorite Christmas album, A Very Special Christmas. It is missing from our ITunes collection and I can’t find it on the internet. It’s just not the holidays without the Pointer Sisters pointing out, Whoa! Here we go! Another year gone by!

Yet, this holiday season has not been as different as we would have guessed. We saw Christmas decorations before Halloween. We went Christmas shopping and heard the same Christmas tunes, over and over. We saw lots of twinkling lights and there’s been Christmas trees in the lobbies of most of the places we’ve stayed in December. Santa even knew where to find us, even though we don’t have a chimney and didn’t put cookies and milk out for him and carrots out for Rudolph.  Courtesy of Santa, we’re staying in some fancier digs tonight and tomorrow and may even treat ourselves to dinner at a real restaurant that isn’t on the side of the road.  We plan to finally watch Bad Santa while lounging on our giant bed with multiple pillows (what luxury!)  We even got to watch our first Steelers game of the season today – for the win, nonetheless.  Thanks, Santa!

Santa climbing up MBK Center in Bangkok

Santa the Roaming Gnome roaming through the streets of Chiang Mai

New fancy digs...

...which we better not get used to because after we leave, we'll be spending 2 days crossing into Laos by boat. I hear it is BYOC (bring your own cushion).

Turns out that even though Thailand is 95% Buddhist, there are signs of Christmas everywhere.  Even more so than the occasional Christians or the abundance of ex-pats, I’m guessing that Christmas is popular here because Thais love any type of celebration.  Yep, Christmas in Thailand isn’t half bad, even though our thoughts will be in Pittsburgh. We wish everyone, wherever you are in the world, a very Merry Christmas. FedEx has your presents, so you’ll have to just enjoy scenes from the holidays in Thailand instead:

Thais posing in the middle of a giant snow globe in Bangkok; why, I don't know. I don't ask. I just capture.

Christmas tree in a Bangkok mall

Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, where you could get a neon sign wishing folks Merry Christmas or with a man peeing. Your pick.

Chiang Mai ladies wish you a Merry Christmas.

Homemade ornaments at the Sunday Market in Chiang Mai

Presents. More specifically, presents, on a barge, on oil drums, randomly in the middle of the canal in Chiang Mai. Only in Southeast Asia.

Couldn't do the annual Christmas Eve photo in front of Sean's parents' tree, so one taken in the mirror of the lobby of where we stayed for the past three nights on the way out the door will have to do.

Jumping Ahead to the Future

We’ve been in Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city, for over two weeks now. Before we came, I had heard that Chiang Mai is a black hole that sucks you in, but if our travel plans were waylaid, I was assuming it would be for fun things, like hanging out with elephants, cooking, and chatting with monks. We did those things – more on that later – but would have been well on our way to exploring the rest of Northern Thailand or even into Laos if life hadn’t happened.

First, our netbook went completely kaput. It wouldn’t start up, not even in safe mode. Luckily, I have constant tech support by my side. Sean worked his computer magic for a couple of days building a bootable thumb drive, recovering important data we never backed-up (like pictures!), installing a new hard drive, giving Windows the heave-ho and installing Linux, and then fine-tuning everything to make sure it all worked with Linux. Or something like that. The moral of the story is, if you aren’t traveling with your own tech support, or even if you are, back everything up NOW because you never know what is going to happen.

Just as we were about to leave Chiang Mai, spiffed up computer in hand, Sean started running a fever with body aches, culminating in his first hospitalization ever! Turns out he acquired a bacterial infection, probably from something he ate, although for the life of us, we can’t figure out what was the culprit, because nothing seemed amiss. He ended up in Chiang Mai Ram Hospital for two days in order to receive IV antibiotics, officially making our decision to purchase World Nomads’ travel and health insurance a good one. They were very on the ball, and worked with us and the hospital to make sure that he received quality care.

I got in BIG trouble for taking this picture...from Sean, not the nurse. I didn't post the one where I'm being given a very dirty look.

The hospital was World Nomads’ recommendation, and other than all of the medical workers being Thai and the retro nursing hats some of the nurses wore, it could have been a hospital at home. Well, except the part where we had to ride in the back of a pick-up truck to get to the hospital. And the part where there was a blaring rock concert outside the hospital on the first night. Or the part where it was super-efficient and cheap. A couple of days before Sean was admitted, he went to the ER to be checked out. We were in and out in two hours, including getting lab results, and the whole visit, including two prescriptions, was only $45. No wonder people come to Thailand for medical care. The two day stay, which was mostly covered by our insurance, came to a grand total of $900. Sean had his choice of private rooms, which came with cable televisions, a kitchenette, and free wi-fi. Once again, he proved to be too tall for Asia – the nurse had to remove the foot of the bed so he could fit. The moral of this story is, for all of our consternation about eating in India, you never quite know how your food is handled anywhere in the world so eat up and get insurance.

Sean's hospital room

View from Sean's hospital room

Once Sean was released, we hung around Chiang Mai for a few more days to make sure he was fully recovered. Just as we were ready to head out, we were waylaid for the THIRD time. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say FedEx and United States Customs are the grinches that stole Christmas. The sordid tale involves non-responsiveness from FedEx, long aggravating phone calls, 3 hours filling out customs forms, and hundreds of dollars in shipping fees, with the end result being that our Christmas gifts for our families were re-routed back to Bangkok, where we are not. Supposedly the package will end up at the Chiang Mai FedEx tomorrow or the next day for us to deal with, so it looks like its Christmas in Chiang Mai for us. The moral of this story is, shipping stuff home is more trouble than its worth (considering our track record includes this fiasco, stolen shoes from a package sent from Spain, broken pottery in a package sent from Morocco, and a missing sculpture last spotted at the Johannesburg post office in a package sent from South Africa).

Actually, the REAL moral of these stories are life happens…no matter where you are.

p.s. Stay tuned for scenes from Christmas in Thailand tomorrow, then next week, more from India to round out the year.