THAILAND!
To practice this blogging thing and to share a recent adventure with y’all I’m going to stray away from the Kenya theme until I have some material and share my trip to Thailand.
My wonderful boyfriend Jacob and I had elaborate plans to go to Vietnam together for 10 days before I left for Kenya. We’d purchased our expensive visas and spent about 4 hours in hell when FedEx overnighted my passport to the wrong house the day before we planned to leave! Luckily that all worked out, but our plane ride didn’t…
We were flying on standby tickets so after three failed attempts at SFO to get on a flight to Hong Kong and eventually to Ho Chi Minh City, we realized we wouldn’t be getting on and needed a new plan – Vietnam went out the window. We were packed for warm weather and itching for an adventure focused on food so we changed our destination to Bangkok, Thailand! We quickly bought a Lonely Planet guide in the airport and boarded a plane to Narita, Japan and onto Bangkok. Our adventure was finally starting!
Fortunately, on the airplane we sat next to some well-traveled ladies that really us plan out our week in Bangkok. I had plenty of hours on that flight to read the guidebook and we walked off the plane with a slight sense of what we were getting ourselves into. We had a “romantic” 2009 midnight kiss in the customs line at the Bangkok airport and arrived at our randomly picked hotel in the gem district of Bangkok around 2 am on January 1st. We went straight to sleep and fortunately missed the horrific nightclub tragedy that happened in the city that night.
Excited and ready to go the next morning, we were eager to explore our neighborhood and wandered around after breakfast. The guidebook stressed how congested and crowded Bangkok was and I was expecting to have to fight for some sidewalk space to see the city – not quite the case this morning. The city was dead. Really dead. Nothing was open, all shops were closed and here and there we could find street food vendors, but no one was out on the street! Confused and upset, we made our way back to our hotel to figure out what was going on.
We learned that Thai people take Jan. 1st – Jan 5th off for new years each year and that the city would be shut down until the 5th… We were bummed, really bummed. We wanted to go to an internet café to do some research and find another place to go but the “Internet is on vacation too” -- the most direct answer we got! The women helping us at the hotel suggested we go south to the beach and spend some time there, where most of the Thais were vacationing too. Through a lovely travel agent named Noi, we arranged a driver and a hotel on Pattaya Beach. Here are some pictures:
Pattaya turned out to be a lovely beach but the neighborhoods and residents were not quite what we expected, though everyone was certainly friendly! This city apparently is the epicenter of the Thai sex work industry and women and a few men for sale were everywhere. The only visitors other than us were older European men seeking young Thai women as their companions. Somehow the travel agent forgot to mention this to us and we felt very out of place.. Wide-eyed and interested we wandered around and tried to take it all in.
The next day we felt the need to get out of the beach town and arranged a trip to a private island we could barely see in the distance. 3 boats and many hilarious translations later we arrived at Ko Larn Island far away from the grit of Pattaya and spent the day sunning and swimming. It was a wonderful day and a needed break from the overwhelming sex industry back in Pattaya.
Ko Larn Island:
We felt stuck because we knew Bangkok was empty but Pattaya wasn’t our thing and we’d paid for our hotel already and we weren’t able to communicate a refund. We decided to stick it out in Pattaya for one more day, then give up one night of the hotel and head back to Bangkok early, regardless if it was dead or not.
We decided to pamper ourselves on the last day and got Japanese facials and Thai oil massages. The facials were lovely and soothing after two days in the sun. The massages were hilarious and memorable, many jokes have stemmed from this experience!
We returned to Bangkok that night to a livelier neighborhood and found it up and running again – a huge relief! We stayed at the most incredible hostel called Suk 11, which was by far our favorite accommodation that trip. There were people, elephants, street vendors, stray dogs, cars, motorcycles and noise in the streets and we finally felt like we were experiencing Bangkok!
Again it was a lot to take in over the next three days but we did the most we could.
Jacob was fitted for a gorgeous bespoke suit
We wandered around the Grand Palace
We went to an early morning food market
We ate at delicious restaurants
Overall it was a wonderful trip and a great joy to be able to travel safely without a plan and to discover the country as we went along. Can’t wait to go back!
Note: if you click on a picture, it will open much larger in a new window!
