In the interest of bandwidth and the convenience of both readers and authors, I split up our Bangkok post into two parts. It’s a very image-heavy post and is tricky to work with for those of us here in the Land of Subjectively Amazing but Objectively Pretty Bad Internet. Marisa also mentioned this, but let us know if there are any issues with the new way we’re loading images.

First of all, let’s get this out of the way:

Okay. On to the post! Bangkok was a lot more interesting the second time around. It was nice to be there for a day to get a taste of the city but we didn’t get to explore at all. Five days was actually not enough to completely explore the place. It is easily comparable to any other major city in both size and development. It has 6 million people within the city itself and another fourteen million in the surrounding area, which means that the Bangkok metropolitan area contains within it almost a third of Thailand’s entire population.

We stayed near Khao San Road, one of the most (in)famous backpacker ghettos in Asia. It has a long history of attracting travelers and has a reputation of being one of those places where crazy stuff happens. That may have been true at some point. It might have been more interesting/edgy/dangerous than it is now, but today it mostly consists of tattoo parlors, bars full of cheap alcohol, a wide range of accommodation, and a few dozen stores and stalls selling the same shitty merchandise that you see everywhere else in Thailand’s tourist areas. Basically, it’s just a cheap place to get trashed, tattooed, and hook up with others with similar interests. There are the occasional offers from tuk tuk drivers to take you to a ‘ping pong show’ (which we did not take them up on). Other than that the area is surprisingly family-friendly. There’s even a Starbucks just around the corner.

We decided to experiment with booking the cheapest place available online, just to see what we’d been missing. We found a room with a private bathroom for 400 baht, which is about $13. This is crazy cheap for the area. We arrived from Phetchaburi fairly worn out and immediately went out to get something to eat. Marisa noticed a bad smell but I didn’t really notice anything signficant. It wasn’t until we got back that we realized that 400 baht was waaay too good to be true. There were huge moldy patches on the wall in the room and in the bathroom and the smell, which had been relatively mild when we first arrived, was almost overpowering when we came back after eating. We decided to find another place in the morning. Thankfully, our new friend Sam was able to hook us up with her room in a much, much nicer place that cost only $10 more. We decided that we wouldn’t test our luck with the bottom of the barrel again.

Our first proper sightseeing in Bangkok was our trip to the Chatuchak Market. This was also our first adventure on Bangkok’s public transportation and we found it very enjoyable. The cost difference between public transportation and hiring a tuk-tuk was fairly massive. The bus cost 17 baht round trip, while a tuk-tuk would have cost around 150 just to get up there. Even though the tuk-tuk rides top out around $5, making it pretty affordable, we decided public transportation would be our first choice whenever possible.

The Market itself is huge and completely crammed with goods and people. According to the website, the place is over 27 acres and has more than 15,000 booths! It was easily the biggest market we’ve been in so far. There was a good mix of locals and tourists though I think the latter might have dominated. A lot of the more interesting stalls (art and pets) had ‘No photos!’ signs plastered on them. These are usually a good sign of lots of tourists that tend to take pictures instead of spending baht. We enjoyed seeing the market but we don’t have the inclination or the room in our bags to buy stuff, so our enjoyment was limited. We had some incredible Thai tea made by a guy that spins while he mixes the tea and some delicious sugar/butter bread along with it. It would have been more enjoyable if we were more into buying stuff but it was still a fun experience.

The next day we hit up the two core tourist spots: the Grand Palace and Wat Pho. The buildings are beautiful but both of them were extremely crowded and not particularly enjoyable to be at. The Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho was pretty cool but, again, it was extremely crowded and not actually much fun to see in person. I don’t want to harp too much on the crowd so here’s some nice pictures.

Between seeing the two main sights we visited the City Pillar Shrine which was a lot more interesting and much less touristy. Cities in Thailand are ‘born’ on particular days and at particular times according to what is astrologically auspicious. Each city in Thailand has a shrine in it, which contains the city’s astrological charts and its horoscope. Bangkok’s is very near the Palace but seems to attract mostly local residents. Besides containing the city’s horoscope, the shrine is also built to house the protector spirits of the town. People come there to pay their respects to those spirits and to Buddha (I think that’s what was going on, at least).

Though we enjoy the historical stuff, Bangkok is also known for being an extremely modern city. We caught a taxi over to the main downtown of the city to check out what people meant. Bangkok has a massive amount of shopping and the malls there have to be seen to be believed. We went to CentralWorld in the middle of the city to see Catching Fire, a goal of Marisa’s since we were in Europe.

The movie theaters in Bangkok are top-notch, plus you get the bonus of having to stand through the King’s Anthem after all the ads have run and before the movie starts! The tickets were cheaper than in the US and so were the snacks. It really seems like the USA is the one place that really rips you off with the concessions, whether it’s in a movie theater, a bus station, or an airport.

To be continued…