After a week up North, we needed to check out Bangkok before laying around on the islands for the next few weeks. You can’t go to Thailand without seeing Bangkok and we had heard a lot of mixed info on what it was going to be like. Our son was here a few years ago and was overwhelmed by the intensity of this city with cars, scooters and tuk tuks everywhere. He still had fun but I don’t think it was his favorite destination My brother and fam was here a few weeks ago and I also got that feeling from him. But we needed to see it for ourselves.
To get from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, most people fly. It is about the same distance as Seattle to San Francisco. But the young hippy backpackers all take the train and it sounded like a good “experience”. The night train is the favorite because you can sleep all night on the train and don’t have to pay for a night of housing. That seemed like too much of an “experience” for us. I had visions of super hard bunks with a swaying train and someone snoring on the bunk next to me. So we went for the 10 hour day train. Some cool scenery with lots of herons and egrets in rice paddies but mostly it was just a long long boring train ride. It ended up being 11 hours, and then we found our Airbnb near Chinatown. Again, we were looking for the “experience” and booked 4 nights in an airbnb down an authentic Thai alley (soi) with a bunch of real Bangkok 1 room houses. Every day walking through our alley, we could see Thai families living in their 1 room with couches, kitchens, TV’s and all their cats. Lots of cats.
Our first full day in Bangkok was the Chinese new year; this year is the year of the Rabbit. We love to walk to Seattle’s International District every year to see the big party but Chinatown in Bangkok is 100 times the party as Seattle. Everyone was wearing red, and out to get the good rabbit luck from the new year. A little too overwhelming because I don’t really like crowds but it was a great “experience”.
The big attraction in Bangkok is the Grand Palace as well as some pretty impressive Buddhist temples. We did the palaces and temples and took the same pics that every other tourist takes. Yes I have pics of the reclining Buddha and the Emerald Jade Buddha but I don’t think people really want to see all my Buddha pics but here is few of fancy palaces and temples.
The attraction we really like was our long-boat canal tour. We reserved a spot on a long-boat tour group, but it ended up being just us and a tour guide. Our guide was half Thai and half Greek. Once he realized that we were Americans he wanted to know the best basketball player that came from our town. Then he could brag that he went to school with Giannis and his brother, and used to play basketball with them. Giannis Antetokounmbo definitely beats Brandon Roy or Jamal Crawford. Anyway, now our guide speaks Thai, Greek and English and led our tour through the canals of Bangkok. I had no idea that so many people lived on these canals. The whole system was really impressive. There are some really really nice houses but there were also some really really not nice houses that were leaning so much that it was hard to believe that people were still living in them.
After the tour, the sun was just setting and we got some great pics of the temples at sunset. Then we took another ferry to another night market for a late dinner. Great day and I’m glad we paid for the tour.
Next stop is Prachuap Khiri Khan which is actually just a short stop off before we get to our first Thai Island- Koh Tao.