I thought I should do a recap of our recent trip to Thailand before I forget most of the details. Denise and I decided on Thailand due to our love of Thai food and we wanted to go somewhere in Southeast Asia. We only had two weeks to travel so we decided to go through a tour company instead of independent travel. This would eliminate the usual long hours we spend planning our trips and we could sit back and enjoy. Since we are turning 40 during this trip we needed to relieve a little stress too. G.A.P. Adventures was rated the best by Nat Geo for their dedication to responsible travel. In determining which of their Thailand tours to do, The Thailand Hike, Bike, and Kayak(ATHB) stood out amongst the others because of the higher activity level and coverage of the country. And the price was also reasonable too. So we booked it well in advance and eagerly anticipated the trip months before. During the time leading up to our departure we did spend a lot of energy trying to find the perfect backpack that we could carry-on the plane and still hold enough of our gear for two weeks in Thailand. We finally settled on the Osprey Kestrel 48(Me) and Osprey Talon 44(wife) and they performed perfectly. No issues with carrying on and even had enough room to bring a few souvenirs home too. After we purchased the packs we made multiple trial runs of packing and unpacking to get the proper fit. Finally October 24th came and we were on our way.
The flights over were not too bad considering the total travel time of ~30 hours. The flights consisted of Allentown to Atlanta(2 hours), Atlanta to Seoul, and Seoul to Bangkok. The Atlanta to Seoul flight was 15 hours, but went pretty quickly due to the personal movie/game/tv players on each seat. Denise had the window, I was in the middle and nice guy from Atlanta, who was working in Seoul, was on the aisle. He was at the stewardesses station table playing cards most of the flight so we could get up and walk around as we wished. I slept a lot on the first two flights according to Denise.
Arrival into Bangkok was a piece of cake. No checked bags to pick up and customs was a breeze. The dossier from G.A.P. said to go past the officially dressed limousine people and go to the queue for the regular taxi’s which we did. This was good advice. Much cheaper even with the extra airport charge and much easier too. Our taxi driver was real nice and tried to speak a little bit of English, but we soon ran that to its limit. It was around 9-10PM on Saturday, October 25th at this point. Highway was kind of empty for a Saturday night I thought. We finally got to the Trang Hotel Bangkok after about a 1/2 hour and the taxi was around 450 Baht not including the 2 tolls.
We checked into to the Trang Hotel and made our way up to our room. The hotel was not as nice as what the web site portrays. The hallway to our room was missing pieces of the ceiling and had patches of mold especially over our door. Fortunately our room was a bit nicer than the hallway, but looked nothing like on the web site. It had two single beds, tv, fridge, and bathroom which is all I really needed. We dropped our bags and decided to head down to the hotel restaurant for some dinner. We had some curry dishes and I had a couple Chang Beer’s before heading back to the room to get some sleep.
We had our first day in Bangkok to ourselves, except for meeting our group in the hotel lobby around 6PM, so we decided to head down to Khao San Road first to start our day. Denise had spent time there before so we thought it may be a good place to start. Upon exiting the hotel we were hounded by a persistent tuk-tuk driver while trying to cross the busy street in front of the hotel. We finally gave in to him and got a ride down to Khao San Road for 30 baht. We found somewhere to eat breakfast that had a bunch of ex-pats so we figured it would be ok. This was my first introduction to the different translations of breakfast items. I got french toast but the syrup was honey and there was no butter. Coffee was ok but obviously pressed. After breakfast we made our way up and down the road and immediately got sick of constantly being hounded by vendors and tuk-tuk drivers. We stopped in a cafe to re-hydrate a bit and read over our photocopies of the lonely planet travel book. The book said that if you go a block away from Khao San Road that there is more local type shopping and less hassling of tourists. They were correct! We went a block away(north) and it was like a different world. Plenty of vendors, but they weren’t constantly bugging you.
Wandering around we ended up over by the park and old fort off of Phra Sumen looking at a map. A overly nice guy that spoke excellent English stopped to talk to us. He was asking where we were going and said that there was a special deal going on with the tuk-tuk drivers today. He said that the tuk-tuk drivers could not charge more than 20 baht today and they will take you anywhere. During this time a young tuk-tuk driver showed up. He also said we should go see the "Lucky Buddha" temple which is where local Buddhists go to pray for winning the lottering and other things associated with good fortune. Since being home, I realized that this is the usual tourist joke since there are numerous different temple photos that claim to be the "Lucky Buddha" temple, none of which are the one we went to. Regardless, the place he recommended for lunch was really good and was definitely a local hangout. Our driver just sat outside and waited for us too while we ate. Denise had a fish dish which wound up being the entire fish and I had chicken and cashews. After that we went to the Lucky Buddha temple. A guy in the temple praying asked how we found out about this Wat(temple) and that tourists don’t usually come there. Was he in on it too?? After that, our driver kept taking us to these suit and gem stores acquiring more free gas cards from each. Eventually we said that was enough and he took us back to the hotel.
