We arrived in Bangkok Saturday afternoon.. after being at the airport a fewe minutes, we knew we were no longer in Japan. We were welcomed by 91 degree weather and swarms of people offering every product known to man... We took a cab to our hostel, not sure if we were getting ripped off or not. Turns out we weren't... The hostel, Lub D, is in the Silom district.. which houses a lot of restaurants and gem shops. The hostel is new, industrial modern and CLEAN!! I actually really enjoyed staying there. We had our own room, which was also a plus.
We spent the afternoon at a large, weekend market that was located at the end of the sky train (a subway above ground). The market was incredible. It was packed with people buying and selling goods, everything from smelly dried fish, to clothing, jewelry and (my favorite) great wood artistry, vases, mirrors, wood bowls, etc.
We found a cute bar to sit and take a break from all the madness, it was a trendy spot with good music and drinks. We actually were sitting at a table next to James Vanderbek (dawson, from dawson's creek).
I wanted to buy so much to ship back but decided to wait to see how much it would cost (and never ended up buying the things i wanted). That night we got back and decided to eat pizza from a cute boutique hotel.
The next day we took a water taxi up the river to visit the Wats (temples). There are several in Bangkok, we chose the top 3 to see. First was the Royal Palace. The buildings are incredible- Intricate mosiacs and gold leafing. The Wats all housed a special buddah (an emerald buddah,a golden buddah, a HUGE lying down buddah, etc.) We had our first Thai food lunch on the river at a hole in the wall that has the best Phad Thai we've had yet. That night we went back to the pizza place.. I guess it's the closest to having "american food" we could find.
We checked out the famous night market after dinner, we were excited to buy all the things we had seen at the other market the day prior (i made a list) but it turns out they did not have the same stuff. The market was really cool, with great new fashions and art but not what we wanted.
Afterwards, sad and deflated, we stood on the street and bargained for a cab ride home, determined not to get ripped off. Becca finally got close to the price we wanted and we were in.. We ended up passing our hotel on the freeway, Becca laughing, while I was thinking we were being abducted, preparing to jump and roll out of the taxi. When the cab turns yet again in the wrong direction she gets scared too! After many attempts of telling the driver we were going the wrong way, he finally stopped and made a u-turn.. the driver assured us he knew the correct hotel, only he took us to the wrong hotel again! Needless to say, we finally arrived back at our hotel.. after a little walk.
The 3rd day we decided we had enough of Bangkok and bought a plane ticket (3 hours before the plane left) to Chiang Mai.. We had seen what we thought we should see and were ready to move on!
