Thailand was absolutely amazing and the best vacation I have
EVER had! I dont know if it is my favorite country because it is the first
place i’ve been to purely for fun and not mission work, but I absolutely loved
it!
My flight from India left at 5:30am,
bringing me to Bangkok at 11:20 with my connection to Phuket leaving at
2pm. I arrived in Phuket at 3:20, got a
shared van from the airport, and arrived at our hostel in Patong Beach to meet
up with Ariel! I was starving after my day of flying, so we went out to explore
and try to find food, discovering that street food sadly didnt exist in
touristy Phuket. The game plan was to
take a nap after eating before we went out that night (I didnt sleep at all the
night before due to getting to the airport at 11pm so I could take the metro
for cheap before it closed), but we also had to plan details of our Chiang Mai
trip so that took precedence. We killed
some time planning and giggling and catching up after not seeing each other in
months, then went up to the room to get somewhat cute for a night on the town! Our hostel was specifically chosen because it
was a 1 minute walk from both the beach and the center of nightlife on Bangla
Road. Bangla Road is awesome, consisting
of more raunchy GoGo Clubs and more bars than you could ever want in a single
area. Due to the varied audience that reads my blog,
I am going to refrain from giving details of my night.... lets just say it was
one of the craziest and best nights out I’ve had, and sleep didnt occur until
around 6 or 7am (message me on facebook if you really want the details). The next morning we hunted down brunch then
threw on our bikinis for the beach. Of
course it had to rain on my one beach day, but it let up enough later for us to
get a bit of sun and swim for an hour or so.
The airport van picked us up at 4pm, we departed for Chiang Mai at 8:20,
and arrived at our new hostel in Chiang Mai close to 11. The hostel owner was very nice, staying up to
wait for us then walking with us down to the local food stands so we could
eat. 25 baht pad thai..... enough
said. We also stopped by this hot milk
stand, where you could get the sweet milk base for 5 baht then add in dried fruits
and herbs for extra. Ariel got a milk
with these yellow bean things in it, and I got sweet steamed bread with a gooey
green sweet dip called pandan mixed with condensed milk. We also got an order of these long donuts,
which we dipped in the milk and pandan mixture.
Thus began our saga of eating.
Chiang Mai was very different from
Phuket, as we were prepared for. Things
were cheaper, and even though it was a decently large city, it didnt feel
overwhelming at all. On our first full day up in the North, we got breakfast
with our hostel owner at a small local shop, then headed to Tiger Kingdom to
cuddle with tigers! We got tickets to go into the enclosure with the smallest
and the largest cats. The small ones
werent as small as we were hoping for, still the size of a large dog and not able
to be cuddled like we had in mind. They
were still really cool though, but we
had to be extra careful since they were young and playful and might scratch or
bite without realizing they were hurting someone. After smallest cats, we went to pet the huge
ones! It was slightly intimidating at first getting into the enclosure with
this giant predator. But the big cats
were actually the most docile since they sleep most of the day and dont get
playful. The tigers are still dangerous
(they are predatory animals so that will never change), but they were raised in
captivity and used to humans, so the danger is lessened dramatically as long as
you follow the instructions of the trainers (no touching the head or the front
paws, firm petting with no tickling, always approach from behind so you are not
a threat approaching them head on). We
got some really cool pictures, memories, and a story to tell from the
experience. After Tiger Kingdom, we were
hungry (surprise, surprise) so set out to sample some more delicious street
food. Not much was open in the middle of the day as far as food, but we did
discover a covered fruit market and decided to go on an exotic fruit binge to
hold us over until dinner/the cooking class. We bought mangosteen, dragon
fruit, jackfruit, mangos, and some small things we thought were lychees. It was so good eating all these fresh and new
fruits (it was my first time eating all of them except mangos). Shortly after we washed all the sticky fruit
juice off, the van arrived to take us to our evening Thai cooking class at
Galangal Cooking School. The first stop
was at the local market to explain and buy the ingredients we would be using
for the class that night, which was pretty neat. We got to pick 4 different courses: an
appetizer, a soup, a main dish, and a noodle dish. I chose vegetarian spring rolls, hot and sour
tofu soup, tofu palanga, and pad thai.
Ariel chose papaya salad, tofu coconut milk soup, green curry, and pad
see ew so we would have different dishes to share and try. All of us wanted to do mango with sticky rice
for a dessert dish too, so even though it wasnt part of the class, the
instructor let us all do it together quickly at the end and share it.
Everything was delicious, and she even gave us printed copies of all of the
recipes offered to take home! I see a homemade Thai food night in my future in
the US.... Straight from the cooking
school, we went out to walk through the Sunday Walking Market which was a long
strip of multiple roads lined with tables selling various things. I ended up getting a dress, and Ariel got a
few pairs of pants. We had an adventure
getting home since we thought we could walk and were being cheap as far as what
we wanted to pay for a tuk-tuk. Turns out
5k isnt fun to try and walk when youre
tired and gross and drenched from the humidity.
Also turns out that if you are 2 foreign white girls who claim they are
going to walk, the tuk tuk drivers will all laugh and talk about you amongst
themselves and one will follow you from a distance until you stop because he
knows it will be a matter of time until you give up.... Which worked for us
because we had a ride, and he also took us for cheaper than the others were
trying to get.
We were up nice and early the next
morning because we were doing a day trip to Chiang Rai, the Golden Triangle,
and the long neck village even farther North.
It took about 2 hours to get to Chiang Rai, where we stopped to see the
beautiful White Temple. We couldnt go
in, which was very disappointing because the inside is said to be even more
gorgeous, but the outside was still impressive.
From the White Temple it was a bit of a drive to get to the Golden
Triangle, which is the river delta forming the borders of Thailand, Myanmar
(Burma), and Laos. We didnt do the
optional river boat tour, so while they were on the boats Ariel and I walked
around to explore the shops and have a snack to hold us over until lunch (fresh
pinapple slices, yum). Lunch at a
delicious Thai buffet followed the Golden Triangle, then we drove more to the
northwest to the Maesai market sitting right on the Myanmar (Burma) border. It
is also the farthest north you can go in Thailand. We took some pictures, I got my dad some
small Thai cigars, Ariel got some small god statues, then we went to a sticky
bun bakery for some taro and pandan-filled buns (because lets be honest, eating
is what we do best). Following the
Myanmar border was the exploration of the long-neck village. In this village, the women start off very
young adding metal rings around their necks to lengthen them as a mark of
beauty and decoration. We were able to
read that the coils dont actually lenthen the neck but rather pushes down the
shoulders and ribs to give the illusion that the vertebrae are being stretched. There were pictures showing the skeleton of
an unaltered woman compared to the skeleton of a long-neck woman after 20 years
of wearing the rings. This was the last
stop of the day, and we started the 4-hour ride home right after that. Dinner was 25-baht delicious pad thai again,
then we opted for showers and sleep instead of going out anywhere. Our last day
in Chiang Mai we didnt do too much. We
had planned on going down to the old town to walk around and see some temples,
but the old town was more like boutique shops rather than the traditional feel
we were expecting from the oldest part of the city. It was also incredibly hot, so after seeing 2
temples and a monument, we decided to go cool off in the hostel during the heat
of the day. We were supposed to go get
sushi from the Tuesday sushi market around 5 before our bus to Bangkok arrived,
but it was raining so the sushi market didnt set up (bummer). Another market did set up though, so we got a
little bit of this and that at different tables and had a picnic dinner at the
hostel. We ended up with a fried mixture of bananas and some kind of root, corn
on the cobb, savory crepes, a bag of salad, and some slightly sweet homemade
rice cakes. We saved the salad and rice
cakes for the bus ride. At 6:30pm, the
bus picked us up then we were off on the 12-hour overnight ride to
Bangkok. Somehow, some way, we were
robbed on the bus despite all of our bags being under our legs on the floor. They took about 1,000 baht from Ariel, and my
debit card. Luckily our passports were in different bags, and luckily Ariel had
some baht and her credit cards in a different pocket. I also had $20 on my in a different wallet so
I could exchange that at a hotel and have some money for food and
transportation. Unfortunately though,
that makes life slightly difficult for the next few weeks since Blue Cross Blue
Shield unexpectedly took out the money for the next 6 months of my health
insurance which was basically everything left in my bank account to spend in
Dubai, on my credit card bill, and on gas money for when I got home. Sarah was
going to put money in my account for me to access, but now the card is
gone. I do still have a different debit
card and my credit card though, so i will have that to use if needed.
Bangkok did not impress me.
Seriously. If you ever go to Thailand, its safe to skip it. We were told that
ourselves so planned our trip to only spend the day of/before our flights in
Bangkok. There is enough to do to keep
you busy if you have money, but things cost more than in Chiang Mai which means
you will spend a lot on whatever the activity is plus the higher cost of
transportation to get through the busy city.
We ate breakfast at a fried rice stand after arriving, got some milk tea
and napped a bit at a booth in McDonalds since we were so exhausted, then went
to see an absolutely amazing temple about 6km away in the city. The temple was called Wat Arun, which means
Temple of Dawn. It has a big connection to cosmology, and is
the most distinguishable structure in Bangkok due to its unusual shape and the
beautiful details. We took a tuk-tuk to
the riverside, crossed on the ferry to get to the temple, then ooh-ed and
ahhh-ed as we walked around taking pictures. Next to the ferry was a small ice
cream shop, so lunch became a 3-scoop passion fruit, green tea, and cookies and
cream ice cream cup. Walking back out to the road we also saw a stand selling
coconuts, and coconut ice cream inside of a coconut, which meant the second
course of ice cream lunch consisted of sharing that as well. It was nice to
have another taste in my mouth with the coconut ice cream since I also finally
tried Durian from a booth on the street.... totally gross, and also something
you can feel free to skip while in Thailand.
Shortly after getting back to the hotel where we left our stuff, the
guys (who we met in Phuket and were meeting back up with in Bangkok)
arrived. We all went to get a few beers,
then back to the hotel room to freshen up before going back out to a club for
some more drinking. The beer we got in the bucket was not good at all, and
neither was the show. The entertainment was performers singing and dancing to
popular English songs, which looked like a train wreck and resembled bad
karaoke more than a show. It was a far cry from all of the sexy excitement of
Bangla Rd in Phuket, but the company was nice and we all just laughed and
talked.
Leaving Thailand was sad, and
saying goodbye to Ariel was the saddest. We had a fantastic trip together and
hope to do more in the future J
Much love,
Alyssa
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