A Chopstick Affair: September 2010

Amanda and I headed to Thailand last week to enjoy the Mid-Autumn Festival day off in HK. We had such an amazing time and had a chance to do so much in so little time. It was a great chance to get away from busy, busy Hong Kong and enjoy some sites in Southeast Asia.

View from the plane! So beautiful.

Bus to Bangkok!

Bangkok

We flew out on Wednesday morning from Hong Kong and arrived in Bangkok around 1:30pm. After taking a 1 hour train ride through the city, we finally ended up at our destination on Khoa San Road. Khoa San is the tourist spot of Bangkok - there were so many backpackers, but even more "touters". Touters are these crazy, crazy men that try to get you to purchase goods or tuk tuk rides... anything that they can scam you into doing. After fending off quite a few of these guys, we finally checked into our hostel, dropped off our bags and headed off to see the Grand Palace. But, on our way there, we were stampeded by MORE touters who were stating that the temples were closed. We didn't believe them and kept on our journey. Next, a nice, Thai gentleman approached us in front of one of the Museums in Bangkok. He seemed very nice and stated that he worked at the museum. After asking where we were from and what we had done in Bangkok, he offered some nice suggestions and taught us a bit of Thai to get around. Then he suggested that we take a boat ride around one of the rivers in Bangkok... it sounded nice since the temples were apparently closed. So we hopped in a tuk tuk and headed on our way to the river. He had stated that a few stops would charge tourists 1400 baht, but the one he sent us to was 900 baht. So, we went. After getting on the boat, we began to question whether or not this guy was legit... 900 baht seemed a little much for this kind of ride. We pulled out our tourist book and read that many of the Thai people in BKK were in cahoots with each other and we had indeed been scammed. We were pissed! After fending off so many of these people, we had been tricked. These people were good. But, we brushed it off and took the 30 USD loss and enjoyed the rest of the day. Take it as a learning lesson.

Our Tuk Tuk Driver

Our private boat trip.


One of our stops on the boat trip. We climbed all the way to the top - definitely reaffirms my growing fear of heights!

There were SO many fish in the water!

After our crazy trip down the river, we headed back towards our hostel stopping for dinner and a foot massage on the way. We hung out at our hostel for a while before heading out to a bar on Khoa San road. We met some international people and enjoyed watching the flock of tourists from top floor of the bar. But, we were exhausted and headed home early to get some rest.

Thursday morning we woke up early to catch a van to go ziplining. Little did we know that our cell phone didn't change time zones - not quite as convenient as our Blackberries in the States. We checked the clock and figured we had missed the bus!!! But, after calling the company, we realized we had made such a dumb mistake... but at least we didn't miss the bus. I am sure we get the American's a good name. We hopped on the bus and took a 2 hour ride to the middle of the tropics.
This company was fabulous and highly recommended! They are called Flight of the Gibbon and for 2500 bahts (about 80 USD) we were picked up from our hotel in BKK, taken to Chonburi for a 3 hour zipline tour, had a great lunch and trip to the zoo, then dropped back at our hotel in Pattaya. It was great! The zipline tour was the highlight of our trip to Thailand - you really can't beat being above the trees, zipping around for 3 hours! We were with a group of 8 people, all of them were coincidentally from Israel and mostly spoke Hebrew, but they were so much fun!


Ready to go!

Amanda

It was a long way down. And when they drop you to the ground, about halfway down you see the other end of the rope headed in the opposite direction. SCARY

We were exhausted by the time the tour was over. We napped on the 2 hour drive down to the coastal city, Pattaya, and were finally at our hotel. When we arrived, we were so happy to be in a hotel - that was right on the beach, for $20 a night! What a steal. After dropping off our stuff in the room, we hopped in the pool and relaxed the rest of the night away.

So gorgeous!

On Friday morning, we slept in and then headed to Nakhon Pathom - a smaller city in a rural part of Thailand. We had found this place called The Hidden Holiday House - an "off the beaten path" kind of place to go. This couple - the man was from Canada and his wife was Thai - had built a huge home on the river just outside of the city. After deciding they had way too many rooms, they opened it up to travelers. Such a wonderful family and great experience to see more cultural places instead of tourist attractions.

Once we arrived, we went to a local zoo where we saw an elephant show (which was hilarious), rode the elephants, and saw hundreds of alligators. Our Tuk Tuk driver was so nice and let us stop at a local market. It was so interesting to see the way that trade takes place. The couple we were staying with told us that they go to the market at least twice a day, once for each meal. They also go to different markets for each meal since each has their specialty. The husband was telling us that he tried to convince his wife to shop the "western" way - once a week for the whole entire week. He joked that he lost and now they go to the market twice a day.

We got back from the market/zoo and took the kayak just down the river to a local restaurant. The food was wonderful, until Amanda ate a little red chili and about cried for 15 minutes. Nevertheless, it was wonderful!

The next morning, the family took us for a bike ride around the area - it was so gorgeous! Then we headed to Ayutthaya, a city that was the former capital of Thailand, to see the many, many temples. I will post my public Facebook album link at the end of this post so you can see the 100+ pictures we took of all of the temples - if you're interested.

Floating markets

Green Tea dessert is famous here too.. gross.

Bike tour.

Once we got to Ayutthaya, we had arranged to take a bike tour around to all of the temples. We were so happy that we paid for this tour because it would have been so difficult to find all of these temples! We toured the city, learning about the culture and history, for about 3 hours then went for a traditional Thai massage. When you think massage, you usually think about a relaxing, Swedish style massage. Thai massages are anything but. Most Thai massages focus on stretching and I swear she was trying to peel the muscle from my bone! It was still relaxing, of course... but I think I will stick to a deep tissue massage instead. After the massage, we were taken on a boat to see the temples at night while having dinner on the boat. Usually there are more people on the tour, however they weren't booked since it was the middle of the rainy season - so Amanda and I had a nice, relaxing dinner to ourselves.

We stayed the night in Ayutthaya at a traditional Thai house. It was quite an interesting night. The bathroom was "traditional." I would consider it traditionally, interesting. There was a 4 foot deep by 1.5 foot wide pool (if you could even call it that) of water in the corner of the bathroom. And there was about two feet for the shower - that had absolutely no shower area... just drained over the bathroom. Amanda and I walked in and thought - oh crap, do we have to bathe in that small little/deep pool of water that definitely had something growing in it? We politely asked the woman who lived in the house what exactly we were supposed to do... she giggled and asked if this was our first time to Thailand. Of course we laughed and she told us the traditional way to bathe... using a cup of the water from the pool (remember... green things growing on the bottom) and bathing in middle of the bathroom. We said OK and decided we would use the shower head instead of the still pool of water. What a funny experience. (Oh and also, the shower did not flush.) We will consider it a cultural experience. But all things said, the family was very nice and we were thankful they let us stay with them.

We woke up bright and early the next morning to head back to Bangkok. After a long bus ride, we arrived at some sketchy bus station just north of the city. We were approached by taxi drivers trying to scalp our business. We were a bit confused as we didn't know exactly where we were - or where we had to be. We then asked a gentleman how much they would charge to take us to where we were going - and he quoted 450 baht. We thought it seemed a little high and dodged the guy for a metered taxi. It ended up only being 150 baht! What a scam. We definitely learned not to trust the taxi drivers that quote a price - they are always inflated by 400%! Metered taxis are the way to go in BKK.

Anyways, we were headed to a Thai cooking class next. This was perhaps the second best part of the trip. It was fabulous! Once we arrived, we went to the market to learn about how to shop at a Thai Market. He taught us about the spices and how the food is cooked in Thailand. It was so great. We cooked many, many dishes - Fried Cashew Nut Chicken, Coconut Soup, Red Curry, Fried Fish Cakes, Spicy Noodles and our absolute favorite: Sticky Rice and fresh Mango!

After finishing, we toured some more temples in Bangkok and then met up with my friend Yui. On my flight from Hong Kong, I sat next to this nice girl from Bangkok - we exchanged information and kept in touch. We met up with her and her friend at MBK (7 story shopping mall in BKK). Then we headed to some night markets for shopping and dinner. What a fun way to end the trip! We headed back to the hostel to rest before our 6am flight! The trip was so exhausting - but we were so happy to have seen so much in so little time.

We are so, so blessed to be able to travel so much! Our next trip is going to be to Mainland China. We will leave this Saturday and return the following Sunday... very excited! No plans to travel any more until the end of the semester - when we return, we will be extremely busy with classes and projects. But, we are both looking forward to the trips to come.... we just hope that we will be able to continue these travels once we start working next year.

Anyways - we will keep you all posted! Thanks for following our travels!

Here are the links to my pictures:
Album 1: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2058174&id=1018950068&l=7893fd248e
Album 2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2058176&id=1018950068&l=4a490b5d42


Gorgeous View

Thailand

September 21, 2010