I am writing to you from Bangkok; a patonggo in hand (more on them later. Definitely my current food of the moment).
I left you the day before our visit to Angkor Wat for sunrise. Well worth the early start - there were plenty of other people there, but in some ways, that made it quite a cool experience. It helps that we got an epic spot, with an even more epic sunrise. I did a classic Caitlin move, and got super dizzy 20 minutes in, so had to alternate between standing to admire the sunrise, and sitting on the ground to watch it through a hole in the fence. No fainting goats here, though, and I think I made the people behind me very happy, as they got their photos while I chilled on the ground.
We travelled overland by bus to Thailand. It all went smoothly when crossing the border, apart from the man in front of us in the line at border control who needed to scan his fingerprints and could not seem to remember where his thumbs were, taking 20 minutes to scan successfully.
We travelled with Giant Ibis, which was recommended by many online. We will add to those positive reviews - Giant Ibis is not the cheapest bus company in Cambodia, but it was well worth the extra we paid. The attendant on the bus was so helpful with the immigration process, leading us through the border crossing, and we even got a pastry and iced coffee for breakfast and fried rice for lunch. It may have taken nine hours, but it was definitely a relaxing day of travel.
Bangkok is a metropolis. As the bus rolled into the city, we thought we must be nearly there, only to look at the maps and discover we had another hour of travel to get to our final stop! There's something about a big city that I LOVE. That is probably because I grew up in Hamilton, where the closest thing to a skyscraper is that communist vibe office block in town, and anonymity is impossible because I’m always seeing 16 different people I know when I go to the supermarket…I digress.
Our first night in Bangkok landed us on the infamous Khao San Road. This street has been a longtime hub for foreign backpackers, and while its image has somewhat softened over the years, it is still packed with bars, food stalls, and people. We found a stall freshly peeling mangoes for mango sticky rice, and I had my third mango for the day. I checked in on our Insta stories, and most people reassure me that three mangoes in one day is perfectly acceptable. Despite people selling scorpions and alligator skewers, we stuck to more classic options on our first night. We have a food tour coming up in Chiang Mai, so hopefully will get some insect recommendations there. We did not stay out all night on Khao San Road, which I am sure shocks you all, considering our reputation as party people. Maybe one day.
Being a big city comes with its challenges. Between the sheer size and the traffic congestion, it takes quite a bit of time to get around Bangkok. We have discovered our favourite form of transport; the Chao Phraya Express Boat. As the Chao Phraya river cuts through the middle of Bangkok, you can take the ferry up and down to cross the river and jump between some of Bangkok’s sites. The orange flag boat is a commuter boat, with lots of stops and a 15 baht price tag for a ride. The blue flag boat is the tourist boat, with English announcements on the stops and stops that hit the big sites. We gave the tourist boat a go first as our own budget version of a river cruise, since the slightly elevated price of 30 baht for a one way ride only comes to NZ$1.50, and there’s a top deck where you can view everything from.
(Jerry informs me the boat is usually 60 baht, and we got a discount ticket for an unknown reason, so facts CHECKED, don’t trust everything I write).
River boat rides do limit you to, shockingly, the river, so we have also tried out the bus system. Google Maps is a lifesaver when it comes to buses, as it tells you which bus to take, where to take it from, when it’s coming, and even how much the ticket costs. That saved us from some language barriers as we paid for our tickets and hopped on, hoping we were going the right way. We had a fair few ghost buses yesterday though, aka buses that never show up, despite being on Google Maps. For a bus that supposedly comes every 3-5 minutes, a 25 minute wait proved to be our tipping point, so we abandoned ship and ended up walking the half hour instead. Our transport woes continued into the evening. We hoped to try out the ferry at night, to see the temples on the riverside lit up, but arrived to find out that the ferry was ending an hour earlier than usual, and that ferry we could see pulling away from the pier…that was the last one of the night. We were on the other side of town, with Jerry having less than 10% battery on his phone, my power bank sitting safely at home, in a big unfamiliar city. These are the moments when I remember I am probably not cut out for solo travel. When no Grab or Bolt drivers were accepting our request, my immediate solution was that we would have to walk an hour and a half home, stopping in every 7 eleven to ask for directions. Jerry gently reminded me that people do in fact catch taxis using cash all the time, and we made it home the old fashioned way. What can I say, I was born in the Google Maps era, and I will go out in the first wave of the apocalypse.
We haven’t taken any tuk tuks here yet. Compared to Cambodia, tuk tuks don’t seem to be as much of a “way of life” here in Bangkok, and they cost as much as a Grab taxi - it seems to be more of an experience in itself. If anyone reading this knows more about the role of tuk tuks in different countries, we’d love to hear from you! We still love seeing them zip around, but we’re back to being regular public transport people who take the bus for now.
A great joy of Bangkok has been the food scene. Right next door to our accommodation is Pad Thai Fai Ta Lu @Dinso Rd. They are on the Michelin Bib Gourmand list (a list for great value food) for their signature dish, the pork loin pad thai. The reviews online alternate from ecstasy at the flavour, to disappointment at the small portion size. We went in with measured expectations, but were blown out of the water. This is the best meal we have had on this trip so far. The flavours were so well balanced, the pork was cooked impeccably, and Jerry and I both looked at each other in stunned silence after our first bite. It is not the largest serving, and you can get cheaper pad thai elsewhere, but for NZ $8, I think we’ll survive the price tag.
I am also currently obsessed with patonggos. These fried dough sticks were introduced into Thai cuisine from Chinese immigrants in the 1920s, and are served with a dipping sauce, such as sweetened condensed milk (or with rice congee at breakfast-time, which is the other way we’ve tried them). They taste similarly to the beignets we had in New Orleans, minus the thick dusting of icing sugar! Banthat Thong Road in the Wang Mai area was another food highlight, with every second shop being somewhere we wanted to eat. We settled for trying satay, and we were not disappointed! Definitely a spot we’ll return to in the future.
Unexpected diamonds of the season were mall food courts. The malls here are so flash. We are not usually mall people, considering we’re not big shoppers, but we were wooed by air conditioning and Uniqlo. There is some incredible food in these food courts, and for really reasonable prices! There are also ultra luxury eateries mixed in, so something for everyone.
A couple of days ago, we started our morning at the Grand Palace. It has rightfully earned that name, because it is GRAND. The temple of the emerald buddha is genuinely bedazzled. If you grew up in the early 2000s with me, you might also be wondering if the builders of this spot had that bedazzler tool that was always being advertised.
While we tried to get out early to the Grand Palace, an hour in, we were there with what felt like 10,000 other people. We did get a spot on a free guided tour, and we really enjoyed it. As well as learning more about the history of Thailand, we learnt more about the key figures of the Ramakien. My favourite fact about the construction in the complex was that you could tell the difference between the monkey and demon warriors by whether they are wearing shoes - the demons wear the shoes, the monkeys do not. See if you can split them in the photo above! Tours always give us snippets of information we would never have found out on our own. We also used our visit as an opportunity to research a bit more about Buddhism in general; including the different forms of Buddhism.
There’s another side effect of being a big city, and that is the pollution. When we got up to go to the Grand Palace, we noticed two things. One, the high for the day was 35 degrees, which is quite a bit higher than we were expecting for this time of year. The other was that the air quality index number was popping off. We started the day around 150, which was enough for us to decide it would be a good day to wear a mask out. However, the air quality index number continued to rise throughout the day, getting to 288 at one point.
For context, we compared with my mum in NZ, and her level was 35. Some of the pollution can be attributed to haze, which is caused by the burning season starting late January (although at the moment, it’s a mix of different contributors). The haze is giving me flashbacks to my choir trip to Singapore and Malaysia in 2015, where the haze was so bad, I lost my voice and didn't sing for the entire trip 😅 Before I feel too high and mighty about my fresh clean air back home, it is worth reminding myself that a decent amount of pollution here in Thailand is caused by western countries (including New Zealand) exporting plastic waste here, where it is often burnt rather than recycled.
We’ve been tackling the heat and pollution by heading out in the mornings, having an afternoon siesta back at our accommodation, then heading out again after dark. We even threw in a movie at the cinema for yesterday’s siesta, to keep things interesting. We loved the walk into Chinatown, where I picked up a few small shopping items in the covered walkways surrounding the area. I’ve collected a few red envelopes in different designs for the upcoming lunar new year, which we will celebrate in Vietnam. We headed to a free outdoor concert in the park last night, with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra. They play every Sunday in the cool season. They had a mix of jazz, modern pop songs, Disney, and classical music, so we were well entertained. We looked into the bougie rooftop bars of Bangkok, but they don’t quite fit into our budget this time around. The reality is, there is no way we can do all the things we want to in Bangkok on this trip. We’ll just have to come back!
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