Bangkok

Carl and I have both been to Bangkok before, separately. I came to Thailand with my parents almost exactly 10 years ago when I was teaching English in South Korea. Carl had been with his sister in 2016 and they went to Bangkok and Chang Mai. Even though I went to Koh Tao before, we knew we wanted to dive there so we decided to see all the gulf islands: Koh Tao, Koh Pha Ngan, and Koh Samui. We’ve both done all the touristy things in Bangkok already: the Wats, the floating market, etc. So we decided not to repeat these things and spend as little time in the city as needed to get to the gulf islands.

Thursday, April 7

We made use of our newfound freedom from quarantine by first going to the mall (6th biggest in the world apparently) to find an ATM. We found that the 4th floor of the building across the street was the bank/atm floor and we had so many to choose from! Then we got an iced latte and I’m sorry to say it was the best coffee I’ve had in a while (sorry Nescafé of South America).

We got a tuk tuk to the touristy street, Khao San road. We’ve been waiting until we got to Thailand to buy some cheap clothes that we’ve been needing. Carl bought a tank top and brightly colored short sleeve button up so that he can morph into full bro. Then we went over to the bus ticket office and got two tickets to Koh Tao for the following eve. The lady said there were only four left and we realized the next week was a Thai holiday (new year!) and probably everyone has the week off. Good thing it’s still so hard for non-Thai tourists to get in to the country otherwise the tickets may have been sold out for us!

Then we went to a restaurant on Rambuttri road, right across from the Rambuttri House hotel where I had stayed with my parents before. On that trip I had eaten a papaya salad at the same restaurant and it was so spicy that I almost blacked out. There was no papaya salad on the menu anymore but besides this change, there were many things the same on Khao San and it was fun to reminisce. As we ate we eyed the Thai massage place across the street.

Even though our bellies were full, a massage seemed like a good idea. They led us upstairs to a nice air-conditioned room. We both agreed that the massage was closer to a physical therapy session and although the elbows in our backs felt good, the part where they pulled our arms back to stretch us nearly broke my back in half and I had to politely say “please stop”.

Having done all the touristy things on Khao San road we felt fulfilled and ready to go back to our Courtyard Marriott sanctuary. We explored what was on tv and settled on watching the RBG movie. We were both so exhausted and still jet lagged that the movie made us cry. When RBG came on screen at the end I laugh-sobbed because of how ridiculously tired and emotional we felt. So then we went to sleep.

Friday, April 8

I woke up at 430am and couldn’t go back to sleep. I listened to my book on tape, Little Women, for an hour and a half and realized that if that didn’t make me fall back asleep, nothing would. Eventually Carl stirred and also could not sleep so we decided to get up and look for some food. We walked along the busy street and immediately found food carts. One had iced coffees and another had veggie spring rolls (the not fried kind) and a kind of rice with fried chicken. It had a fried egg on it so we said ‘close enough to breakfast’ and took everything back to our hotel room to munch on. If possible the coffee was even better than the one I had the day before. Also fresh spring rolls for breakfast may be my new thing- they were great!

We didn’t have to check out until noon so we took advantage of our fancy pants hotel and sat by the pool for a bit. Already at 8am it was SO hot and dunking into the unheated pool water felt so refreshing.

Eventually we had to say goodbye to this paradise and checked out. The hotel let us leave our bags for the day so we went out to explore.
We headed to the mall to find a unique food court experience but as we tried to cross the street a nice old Thai man stopped us and engaged us in conversation. We told him we were looking for food and he recommended an area called Thai Town that he said had food options near the pier. I tried to look it up on a map but couldn’t find it. Then he showed us pictures of a boat, the famous temple, the floating market, etc. He advised us to get a tuk tuk for 40-50 baht down to the area. This is when we smelled a scam and we politely thanked him and left.
As soon as we got across the street another nice Thai man stopped to chat with us. He told us about his daughter who lives in South Carolina. This man also dissuaded us from going to the mall and told us to check out the local food market instead. He said we should tell a tuk tuk driver to take us to Sawadee (hello) pier. He seemed more convincing than the last guy and we did want local food so we took his advice and got a tuk tuk to this area. And it was all a scam.
When we got there, there was only one restaurant next to a shabby looking pier. A man was waiting for us out front. He had a laminated pdf describing the tour package he wanted us to buy: take a water taxi across the canal to the temple, see the floating markets, etc. We were disappointed in ourselves that we got scammed, especially because my parents and I had been similarly scammed 10 years ago! So, we had already seen the things he was offering and we politely refused and walked away. At least, we told ourselves optimistically, we were in a new part of Bangkok we had never been to before and we didn’t lose any money in the scam.
As we walked ‘back’ we walked toward China town to find somewhere to eat. It’s likely that no western tourist has walked on the streets that we did which were lined with hardware shops selling strips of metal, cleaning supplies, industrial equipment, etc- everything a tourist could want!! Eventually we came to something resembling China town and found a place selling pork buns that were ok.
We came upon a clothes market that was geared toward Thai customers. Everything was super cheap but all the t-shirts had terrible things in English written on them. My favorite was one that said ‘glock’ on the right pec and had a sad drawing of a gun below it. We didn’t see anything that appealed to us, but it was fun to look. Eventually we came to some food carts parked in front of a 7-11. I went into 7-11 to get us some cold bevies and Carl got us lunch of pad Thai and fried spring rolls for 70 baht ($2). We were close to the canal with water taxis so we decided to test one out. We had to wait a bit but when the boat finally came it speeded down the canal and we were back to the mall area in no time. And it only cost .25 cents/person!

By this point in the day I was really feeling my jet lag early morning wake up. We got another ice coffee but it didn’t inspire anymore adventures. So we went back to the Marriott, sent fond goodbyes and got a taxi back to Khao San road to get the night bus.

We opted for a different restaurant than the one we had been to the day before but really all of them are exactly the same. We sat outside on hip hippie furniture and took advantage of the happy hour deal to just sit and use the WiFi while we waited for time to pass. We ordered some food- pad Thai and fried rice- which was surprisingly good for how touristy the place was. Despite the jet lag blurriness we also managed to down 3 large Thai beers. Feeling good, it was time to check in for our bus.

Somehow the bus company still uses chaos as their organization model. They gave us all different colored stickers that corresponded to different buses that were parked down the road. We realized that many of the tourists were actually Thai and so it was even more miraculous that we heard them call our group to the bus because they just yelled in Thai at everyone standing around. We saw some other blue sticker peeps and they confirmed, in English, we were going to the right bus.

When we got on I put in my earplugs and put on my eye mask and fell asleep almost instantly.