Beef paste

mjf5493 — Thu, 12 May 2016 09:25:00 GMT

After a pretty rough start to our first day in Bangkok, Zach and I got an early start to today at 3 a.m. I guess that's what happens when you pass out at 4 p.m the previous day. We wanted to try to get more adjusted to the local time, so we tried falling back asleep, but that didn't seem to work. So we instead slowly got ready while we waited for this amazing breakfast place to open up down the street at 7. After that, we took the metro to the main train station to buy our tickets to Chiang Mai. At that point we hadn't decided on whether we would leave for Chiang Mai tonight or stay another night in Bangkok. As it turned out, they had seats on an air conditioned sleeper train for tonight so we went with that. We’ll be passing through Bangkok again multiple times during our trip so if we missed out on anything we have another shot at it later. After the train station, we had like 8 hours to kill before going back for our train, so we found our way to the mall via Bangkok sky train. We might be slightly obsessed with the public transportation system here. For like $0.60 you can take an air conditioned train pretty much anywhere in the city. Everything is in English, you buy tickets from a touch screen kiosk, and my favorite part is that it's okay to look a little lost without someone pestering you to let them drive you to their clothing factory. That's probably one of my favorite things about Bangkok.
The mall we visited was pretty much what you would see in the US, but like 1000 times bigger. We weren't really looking for anything in particular, just walking around in the AC. There was a small temple in the city center which was lovely to visit. We ate pretty much continuously throughout the day because we were so hungry from all the walking we did. (27,000 steps / 11.2 miles according to my fitbit). We stopped at some food stalls and tried their BBQ chicken on a stick which was amazing. So later, we went back and decided to try the beef this time. It looked like beef and smelled like beef. But it was more of a beef shaped paste pod. Super gross. Terrible idea. 0/10 would not recommend. The rest of our meals for the day were delicious and incredibly spicy. At one restaurant the waiter placed a flower pot of what looked like cabbage and an intricate arrangement of leaves on the table. “Table decoration or food garnishes? Better eat it either way”- Zach’s thought process on that.
Long story short, we packed up our stuff and we are now about to eat dinner on our overnight train to Chiang Mai. It left at 6 p.m and we should get there by 7 a.m tomorrow. We brought some snacks for the ride and our goal was to go into the 7-11 and buy the weirdest food we could find. Zach won with his dried cuttlefish jerky, so we’ll see how that goes tonight.
We booked another airbnb right in the city center, but we can't check in until 1 p.m, so we will probably go find some wifi so that we can actually locate the place, then drop off our bags and hopefully find a nice place for a Thai massage. We don't really know how long we’ll be in northern Thailand, maybe a week? But our plans include, in no particular order, trekking, river rafting, visiting elephant sanctuaries, cooking classes, markets, and of course more temples. I'm looking forward to a long night of Zach making a commentary on everything he sees out the window, such as “that lady just got a smack down in checkers” and “I've just been watching this dog take a dump”. Can't wait to see what's next.

First impressions of Bangkok

mjf5493 — Tue, 10 May 2016 04:32:00 GMT

So let me preface this by saying that by the time we got to our airbnb in Bangkok, we had been awake for over 40 hours. Zach slept a little on the plane, but I didn't at all. So we were exhausted, sweaty and hungry. Luckily getting to the airbnb was ridiculously easy. Our host provided us with very detailed directions, almost like a treasure map, using landmarks like restaurants, banks, and apparently an old green fence. We were so impressed with the train system, I found it easier to get from the airport to the house in bangkok than it was to get from Penn Station to JFK (especially considering we almost ended up on a train to Newark). Honestly, I think my first impression of Bamgkok was that I didn't like it. I didn't expect it to be so hot, crowded, and smelly. Plus our airbnb house was a bit dingy, and despite the large number of hostels, it seemed like we were the only travelers in our little neighborhood. We talked about skipping our second night in Bangkok and catching a flight out to Chiang Mai in the morning. Zach, being the level headed one, decided that we should eat and sleep before trying to make decisions. So we threw in a load of laundry and stopped by the Italian restaurant next door, mostly because we didn't have energy to look elsewhere. The food actually was delicious and exactly what we needed. We took showers and fell asleep at 4 p.m. Now it is 3 a.m and we are up making plansfor the next few days, and waiting for breakfast restaurants to open. But hey, at least we get to see the sunrise. As of now, we are going to try to get a night train to Chiang Mai for either tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, we have temples to see, markets to visit, and restaurants to eat at. Now that we are fed and rested, we can actually appreciate all that Bangkok has to offer. I'm working on uploading pictures. In the meantime, check Facebook

Look Mom I'm Still Alive

Beef paste

First impressions of Bangkok