Bangkok

The Picture Story: http://drake.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11470&l=362da&id=512610984

The Long Story:
About lunch time on Friday Meredith found out her friend (who is traveling Thailand and Singapore) was going to be in Bangkok for the weekend. This started our planning of weekending in Bangkok because why not! We hopped on the 11pm bus to Bangkok which was so plush. This was a first class bus but we had no idea! At the bus station we just started walking up to different windows until someone understood and had a bus leaving for Bangkok in a few hours. For a little under $10 USD (329 Baht) we got water (hot commodity), a little snack, and towels to use as blankets. I will have to say that everyone should use towels as blankets because they keep the heat in more. We slept off and on all night and arrived in Bangkok around 4:30am. So what do you do at a bus terminal in BKK at 4:30am. We didn't even know where we were and we expected that once we were in BKK everyone would speak English. Haha...not when you arrive at the bus terminal that serves the Northeast. People were very helpful but our Thai phrasebook wasn't being very helpful and no one knew enough English (time number 728 that I wished to start Thai lessons that second). We figured it out and had a taxi take us to the shopping district of BKK. We got dropped off in Siam Square at about 6:30am and had the whole square to ourselves. We sat down on a curb and looked through our guidebook (thanks Judy!) to find a place to eat breakfast. We decided to try this vegetarian restaurant that the guidebook said was the best restaurant in Thailand. From the map I finger measured and it only looked about a mile walk. Not bad in the early morning. Well, as always, finger measuring is not a good idea. Maybe an hour and a half later we got to the restaurant. It was great to get to see so much of the city by walking and it helped us get our bearings. Carrying our packs was getting pretty hot even though the day was overcast. We saw a lot and most of the pictures are from this walk.
The restaurant was very yummy and we started seeing other foreigners so we figured we were near a place we could stay. We found Khaosan Road which is known as the backpacker haven of BKK. There is just one road, maybe a couple of blocks, of shopping and guesthouses. We easily found a place to stay for the night so we could get rid of our packs! We shopped around Khaosan Road for a few hours because there is so much to shop for. The clothing is so cheap (for the dollar) and so trendy. Lots of pirated movies and music. Anything you could want to buy for yourself or as a souveiner was on that street. Very overwhelming. I ended up buying some CDs, a t-shirt and a bracelet. The t-shirt was the best purchase as it was designed by a Thai artist who owns the shop. Her shirts were all so neat and we had such a hard time deciding which shirt we wanted. It even has a little tag on the outside of the shirt saying it was made on Khaosan Road. Very cool.
We eventually made our way up to the famous Weekend Market in Northern BKK. We took the bus which was a little crazy trying to figure out which bus and it which direction. We just made one mistake so that's pretty good. The market was insane. There was so many shops and people that it was very hard to even stop and look at something. Luckily Meredith had some sense of direction in the maze because she got us out of there when it was time to go and meet her friend back at Siam Square.
Back on the bus which is an experience in itself. I have never seen such old ladies running to catch a bus. And I mean literally running because the bus pulls up and people are waiting all around the bus stop. You must then rush to get on that bus because it will not wait for you. We saw a bus keep moving as some elderly people were trying to hurry to catch it. They did get on it but it seems like the buses would just as easily leave you, yet I never saw anyone miss it. Then you are all on and the driver floors on the gas, we're looking out the window hoping we'll miss the motorbike right next to us and somehow we do. Some of the buses have wooden planks for floors and someone who walks around collecting people money (of course with big heels, who knows how she could balance when I felt like I was gripping on until my knuckles were white!). So great to take the bus because we got to see a lot yet of course a taxi would have gotten us there quicker and may have felt safer although it probably wasn't.
The bad news of the trip was that we never met up with Meredith's friend. We could only email each other as he didn't have a phone and the meeting spot was mixed up (two different ice cream shops in the same area but not close enough) and no internet cafes to get in touch with each other. It was too bad but we were still happy we went to BKK. Siam Square was much different at night as it is one of the most happening places in BKK. People were everywhere and it looked totally different than it did at 6:30 in the morning!
That night we got some delicious Italian food and found a bar with a live band doing covers of English and some Spanish songs. It was a good relaxing evening as we were both tired and dragged ourselves to sleep at midnight.
The next morning we boarded the bus to go to the bus terminal and then a bus back home to KK. The bus back home was awful compared to our bus to BKK. We didn't know that there were different buses that went between the cities so when we walked into the bus terminal and someone understood where we wanted to go and could get us on the next bus (which happened to be leaving right then) we were happy. We actually thought we got a better deal on the same kind of bus because it was 60 baht less. To our surprise this bus was no first-class bus. This one didn't have a bathroom which I was freaking out about and many of you can understand such I have such a small Grandma bladder. Luckily they waited for us to use the bathroom at the terminal (a whole other blog will include thai toilets). Well this bus is not the kind where you really need a ticket. Seems like every person on the side of the road would be picked up and taken wherever he/she wanted to go. WHAT! People were sitting in the aisles, people were sitting in the space by our feet (we were in the first seat so there was room but we wanted to stretch out and then we had to beware of our feet offending someone, as Meredith unintentionally did right away! Who knew that while her feet were outstretched and she was looking out the window that the money taker would sit right next to our feet, start counting the money and turn right into her foot. Huge cultural faux pas that he was not very nice about!). It was ok and just an annoying bus ride after we had been on the best of the best and just wanted to get home.
But then this man got on in some small town who was incredibly annoying. He didn't speak English, kept trying to talk to us in Thai, kept trying to touch Meredith's knee (we don't know why other than he really had a thing for her), he would stare at Meredith, talk to the man sitting next to him obviously about us because he was just pointing at us. I thought it was pretty uncomfortable since I am used to being treated with so much respect from my male co-workers at KKU. I didn't know how to say "stop" in Thai either and it's really not ok to say something like that but eventually I just started telling him "no" in a polite way (which translates in English to "not yes please"). We were pretty happy when he got off.
All in all, a great weekend trip to get a taste of BKK. It's a nice place to visit and I really love the atmosphere of a city with so much to do. But for our salary it's pretty expensive. A great place to experience a city so unlike KK. I'm so happy Meredith was down for such a crazy weekend of traveling because this is exactly how I want to spend my time in Thailand when I'm not teaching.