Travel to Bangkok Days 1-2 Saturday and Sunday

On February 12 Jason and I jetted away from Korea to the exotic lands of Thailand and Cambodia. As part of our contract as English teachers in Korea we are given three weeks of vacation every winter. We used one week up on my family visiting, but managed to squeeze out another week during the Lunar New Year when we went to Busan, and thus had two solid weeks left. Due to the ambigious wording in our contracts our schools counted weekends as vacation days, which I find super strange as we don't ever work on weekends, but whatever, we still had two solid weeks to soak up the sunshine and warm weather in South East Asia.

Our flight on Saturday morning was so early that we wouldn't have been able to make it in time if we left Wonju the same day, I mean it does take us three hours by bus just to get to the airport. So Friday night we made our way to Incheon and stayed in a cheap hotel that provided a free shuttle to the airport. (Seems like so long ago already!) Saturday morning we borded our flight no problem. Our China Airways flight had a short layover in Beijing where we ate Pizza Hut. Already we were beginning to remark on the differences between Chinese people and Koreans. But our analysis was cut short as we quickly borded our next flight to Bangkok. Mind you both of these flights unloaded and relouded the planes on the tarmack. Meaning we had to get on a bus, on the tarmack, and be driven to the terminal. No wonder we got such a great price on tickets! The flight itself was fine though, still better than United! We didn't check our bags either so there was no worry of lost luggage. We managed to fit everything we needed for two weeks of travel in my large backpacking bag and one small backpack. Go us! I actually could have brought even less because even though I thought I just might, I definitely didn't need my sweaters!

2 Hours in Beijing

Upon disemarking in Bangkok we immediatly felt the heat, the beautiful, humid, heat. We were sweating! And for the first time in months, because it was actually warm, not because we'd just walked a mile in the snow with four layers on and were now overheating. It was glorious. We had to wait awhile to get through immigration and by then it was already 8pm Saturday night. There is luckily on a two hour time change between Seoul and Bangkok so we weren't that tired. We did quickly find a place to eat though. And just like we appreciated the heat, we appreciated the food. Pad thai, a sandwhich and tea never tasted so good! Especially because basically all we've eaten for the past six months is Korean food. Don't get me wrong, there are many excellent Korean dishes, but there is zero variety of flavor or ethnic cuisine. So far Thailand was already awesome.

We had to take a taxi to our hotel and luckily our driver didn't rip us off or drop us off in a bizzare location or anything. I had heard so many warnings about Bangkok and taxis and whatnot that I was already a little paranoid. We stayed at the Prince Palace, a huge hotel on the bank of one of the small canals running through Bangkok. It was a nice place but full of huge tourists groups there for conventions and weddings and the like. It was also filled with lots of Russians and other Eastern Europeans which we were not expecting. We didn't hear English spoken at all the first night, unless it was by a Thai person taking someone's order. English is definitly the universally spoken language, lucky for us. The hotel had a great outdoor pool area located on the 11th floor with a bar and large swimming pool. We enjoyed looking out at the beautiful view of the Bangkok skyline that first night while sipping cocktails.

11th floor pool and bar at night.

Jason with some mood lighting and the Bangkok skyline.

Bangkok, Thailand

Despite my best intentions, we'd arrived in Bangkok without much of a plan. Thus dawned Sunday morning and all we had to go off was a little map we'd grabbed at the airport. After later collecting many more maps, we realized that this map wasn't that helpful. We could locate ourselves on it and saw that we were relatively close to a numer of temples. We decided we would walk out the hotel door and see were our feet took us. Perhaps that was our first mistake...?

The area directly around our hotel turned out to be a sprawling outdoor market. We walked through a few stalls and eventially came out on a bridge crossing the canal our hotel was next to. We were taking in the sights, the busy street with tuk tuk's zooming by, people selling clothes for extremely cheap prices ($1 for tshirts anyone?), vendors, motor boats on the canal, the few large building we could see in the distance. We had walked cities before and walking had always been a good way for us to orient ourselves.

Canal in Bangkok, our tall hotel on the right.

Tuk tuk

 First the man wanted to take us to the tourist shop so we could buy discount tickets on buses, etc. I was immediatly put off and not having it. The lady we talked to was picking her teeth and barely looked at us, scowling the entire time. We told her we wanted to take a train to Cambodia. She said there were no presale tickets for that. I was done. She tried to get us to go to other places in Thailand but I was not interested. Next our driver actually took us to to a giant golden statue of Buddha, hunderds of feet tall, that was pretty cool. Then we drove to see another temple, a "black buddha" statue. There we were ushered inside and told by the nice man working there that they were closing for lunch, but he quickly showed us the buddha, supposedly colored black because of a monk who's body magically didn't decompose after his death. This was also supposedly the temple where the king had previously been a monk. The nice worker told us to check out a tailors shop during lunch as everything would be closing. Suspiciously two other men, obviously tourits, walked upstairs to the main part of the temple was we were leaving. I wondered, and still do, if we could have also done so.

We were under the impression that we were going to a clothing "expo" special that day. We imaginied a large room filled wich cheap clothes were we could brouse at our leisure. Jason actually asked for us to be taken there. We stopped soon on a random street, looking much like the street the tourist shop was on. We we ushured inside a one room studio where they can CUSTOM design your clothes. This was not what we wanted or expected. With Jason as the focus we were seated in a back room were Jason was offered custom made suits, shirts, pants in all kinds of supposudly nice materials from silk to tweed. I feel he was a bit tempted by a custom suit at only $200 but again I could smell scam and was not having it. Perhaps the suit really would have been nice... We met people later in our journy who had bought these wares and were really happy with their purchases. But this was not $200 I wanted to spend, especially in this cheap looking shop. Outside again our driver told us he would take us to a jewelry expo. More and more I was smelling a scam. I was convinved everyone we had met so far, the nice man on the street, the old man at the temple, were all in on the scam. (Now I realize, I was totally right!) The jewelry shop was worse than the rest, it was dingy and old. I thougth for a moment Jason was really going to buy something from the pushy seller, an ugly gold chain or the ugly, misshapen pearl earrings. Far far from my taste. While inside an older British couple came in. They looked amused and annoyed at the same time. The only thing the man said to me was "well, we've changed professions five times today!" I wanted to ask him more, if he thought this was all as scam, but I didn't have a chance. They definitely knew it was all a joke and quickly left the store. The woman kept asking us "why, why you not buy? We give certificate." Jason still believes the jewels were probably real, if not valuaded at their sale price, but I'm not convinced.

Tall gold buddha. It was hot outside!

Lavish interior of the temple

"black buddha"

Cat on car

After that we finally got to see another temple. I believe this one was actually closed on the inside and there was some kind of festivity going on. There we met a nice British man who Jason talked with for some time about Bangkok and what to do there. He too talked of the expos so now I'm not so sure he wasn't trying to help the tuk tuk scam out as well. On our way out of the temple we were greeted by yet ANOTHER nice Thail men who claimed to be working for the government and suggested the jewelry expo or something of the like. Another plant. That's why this sceme was so perfectly orchistrated, everyone was in on it and knew how it worked because they do it every day! Off we wizzed to an even larger jewlery expo where we again had to try to pretend to be interested. The good thing about this one was that at the end there was a soveiner shop where we did buy some cheap trinkets, so at least we got something out of it. At that point it was 3pm and we wanted to go back to the hotel and lounge by the pool. We told our driver and he pleaded "please one more, governement promotion is only today!" At this point I just said fine, one more, and gave him the benefit of the doubt for that split second. This brought us to another custom tailor shop. Worse than the last this guy took us around the ENTIRE store, practically begginig us to by something, anything, even if it was a dumb coin purse for $1. We didn't. What we've realized and found out since is that every stop our driver made, and every store we went in, he got a gas voucher from the store, for bringing customers. He may have gotten more if we bought something, but we're not sure. So in the end our ride did only cost 20 baht, but we'd only seen two temples. At least people were friendly! It was a great joy to have so many people speaking fluent English to us once again, and to be more open, Koreans can be so reserved and follow so much protocal.

Jason was high on life still though, happy with the day, and I have to admit, I've become more cynical only looking back. At the time, it was all pretty fun. Whizzing through the streets of Bangkok on a tuk tuk isn't a bad way to travel, we got to see a lot of random streets and glimpses of beautiful buildings and temples. It was warm and breezy. I left out that we also had a delicious lunch midday that our driver did take us to. I got fried rice in pineapple, and it was served in the pineapple! It was delicous! Sweet, warm, mmm, I miss it already!

When we got back to the hotel we walked around a little more. We saw TONS, hundreds of pineapples on the street! We bought some food off a street vendor, thinking it was grilled pineapple. It turned out to be some disgusting yellow fish, gross. Then it was time to tan by the pool but alas, it was too late by then and the sun was behind some clouds. I thought bitterly of the tuk tuk driver who had wasted our time.

Pineapple fried rice

Pineapples galore. Men gather to watch a boxing match on TV.

Its fish, not pineapple

The British man had mentioned a shopping center earlier called MBK that was a place to go with tons of food. We found it not far on the map and decided to head to MBK/Siam Center that evening. We overpaid a tuk tuk driver to take us (darn their scams!) but once we got there were happy we went! Siam Center was amazing! It was the largest, most luxerious and cutest shopping center ever! I thought South Coast Plaza was impressive, I thought a Seoul department store took the cake, but this blew them right out of the water. Combining opulent shopping with affordable and stylish stores (prices in Thailand were generally lower than the US and Korea) Siam Center was a feast for the eyes. It also boasted an aquarium and the largest "food court" I've ever seen. We love the "food court." Instead of cheap places to grab a bite, it was filled with high end dining, yet none of our amazing meals cost more than $10. We had Thail food, tacos and Italian. It was fabulous. I miss it. There was also a large gourment supermarket filled with ANY and EVERY food type you could want, at home our abroad. We ended the evening buying chocolates for Valentine's Day (I'd already enjoyed a cupcake at the foa-carnival one of the shopping areas had set up.) That area of Bangkok also included the Sky Train and Metro. Neither went far, no more than 10 stops, and both were totally divorved fromt he old area of town, but we decided we had to ride the Sky Train a different night. Finally it was back to the hotel.

Siam Center, the Sky Train

Cupcakes. Mmm the delights of an oven!

More to come...

Bangkok skyline, Day 2