Bangkok - Part 1

Bangkok... the crazy city that shows up in movies and documentaries for so many different reasons! We were obviously curious about visiting Bangkok... our initial plan was to start our visit to Thailand via Bangkok but due to the schedule with DinDang we postponed our visit to our second time in Thailand (around April/May). As we have been realizing, plans change all the time while travelling and after the motorbike accident in Krabi we didn't have the energy to visit the islands and Bangkok seemed a nice place to visit... We also started to get really curious about shopping in Thailand and everybody told us that the best place to shop was in Bangkok... after a few days recovering from the accident, we bought our bus ticket! We only had two days and a half to visit the city and we knew we would be back to Bangkok soon so we focused our stay in visiting some markets and do everything in a very relaxed way...

We arrived in Bangkok at 5am, after a 10h bus trip... as usual, we didn't have a booked room so we followed the indication of our book "Southeast Asia on a budget" from rough guides and he headed to Kao San Road... a street that supposedly had a lot of life and entertainment. As soon as we got to the street we realized how true that was,  there was still a bunch of people in the street having their last beers, some having a foot massage to relax from the dance clubs and others enjoying drunk food from the street stalls... we walked through the street hoping to find a place to stay but 5am is not a good time to find a hotel... they were either expensive (above 600 baht/night +- $17/night) or full... more or less an hour later we were close to give up and seat in a restaurant to wait until noon (check out time, where hotels become available again) but, a very nice guy saw us looking for rooms and recommend us to go to the other side of the neighborhood... he said that rooms there were much cheaper and that there was less noise. We followed his recommendation and immediately found a room with private toilet for 300baht/night... exactly what we wanted!!

We slept to recover from the trip but we didn't want to waste time at the hotel so we made ourselves wake up at noon to start visiting the streets of Bangkok. We started by walking around our neighborhood that was now full of life... food stalls everywhere, small street shops full of amazing clothes and people everywhere.

After exploring our neighborhood and having a delecious Egg Vegetarian Padthai for 30 baths (amazing), we got on a tuk-tuk (long time since we took a tuk-tuk) until Chinatown... as usual, Chinatown was a bit messy... a lot of people, colors and smells. We visited it for a while but we are not great fans of Chinatowns... there was really nothing that we wanted to buy and we never feel very confortable in trying the food there, except some tiny pancakes that we tried for 10 baht that were delicious (at least they didn't look like weird parts of animals like all the other food).

Tired of walking after a long trip, we went back to our hotel to rest a little bit so that we were able to explore our "crazy" neighborhood at night. Fully recovered, we left the hotel for dinner but in Bangkok it is hard to go simply for dinner... the crowd, the stores, the music and the energy around pull you for a few drinks... and since we are in this trip to enjoy, we just went with the flow... one beer... two beers... three beers... and suddenly we were trying BUGS... we tried larvs, crickets and a big grasshopper! It was weird but it tasted like chips.

Our second day was purely for shopping, we went to the famous Chatuchak Weekend Market, one of the biggest markets in the world... there we were able to find nice pieces of clothes for good prices but you can find everything... from clothes to furniture, jewelry to animals, etc, etc, etc... we spent hours there. It was nice but we were expecting to be able to bargain much more than we did.
The rest of the day we used our time to buy a few things that we needed around Kao San Road.

As a first impression, Bangkok was nice... a great city to party with friends, an awesome place to go shopping and to be introduced to the Southeast Asia culture. Amazing and cheap street food and a lot of other tourists to meet. It is cheap to eat in the food stalls that are everywhere but it is very easy to "lose control" and end up spending money in beers and party.
So far, in Thailand, the culture shock has been very little, maybe because the 4 months and a half in India prepared us very well or just because Thailand became very touristic. Although, in Bangkok, we had our first contact with ladyboys and with the way that they are treated in their society which has surprised us in a good way.

We only saw half or a quarter of the city but we will be back at least for two times so we have time to live Bangkok...

Koh Phayam & Krabi, Thailand

After DinDang, we were ready for a few days at the beach. Due to the close location, we chose to visit Koh Phayam, one of the islands on the East Coast of Thailand, on the Andaman Sea.

Maria and Clohe also wanted to go so we ended up going all together.. Abby would meet us there the next day.
In order to save some money, we decided that the best way to get to Ranong, the town from where the boats to the islands depart, was to hitch-hicke, Maria and Clohe were really excited about it. As girls travelling alone they would never do it by themselves so it was nice for us to be able to "give" them that experience. Getting a ride was extremely easy, most of the Thai people own pick-up vans so it is just a matter of finding the generous ones. After taking two rides we reached the Pier where we took a slow boat to the island. The boat ride was two hours so to make it as funny as the hitch-hicke we ended up sitting on the outside of the top of the boat facing the waves, no doubt a privileged sitting, the landscape just blew our minds, many diferent islands with diferent sizes and shapes were on our sight forming all together a beautiful painting... the last island was our island... Koh Phayam.

As we arrived to the island, we realized that there were no cars.. we wanted to go to Buffalo Bay and to get there we had three options, get a taxi bike, walk or rent motorbikes.. a taxi bike would be almost the same price as the motorbike so we ended up choosing to rent the motorbikes... the only problem was that Pedro was the only one that knew how to drive properly a motorbike... and we had our backpacks with us. After some thinking and encouragement, I felt that I could also drive it.. the roads were not busy and I had learned how to drive in India... Maria went with me and Clohe (that had a bigger backpack) went with Pedro... her backpack was so big that she even fell when she was trying to get on the bike... an hilarious moment for sure! The way to the beach was not easy, the bikes were really heavy and my bike stopped several times but we ended up arriving well! As we arrived, Clohe and I stayed on the beach with the backpacks while Pedro and Maria went to look for accomodation. After more or less one hour they showed up with a few options but the cheaper one was to rent a tent by the beach... we went to check the place and it seemed really nice so we stayed there... Clohe and Maria still considered the more expensive bungalows but they quickly changed their minds.

After a few hours in the island, Pedro and I started to comment the differences between Thailand and India.
Usually, people create the environment but India  is so intense, the "smell" of religion is so strong, the culture is so diferent, that travellers become more introspective. In Thailand, the opposite happens, the environment is much more relaxed and the culture shock is almost null, so travellers (or let's say tourists) tend to be more active and "party oriented".
Therefore, without realizing, we were talking to everybody in our beach camp... it was nice to socialize in such an open way.

Koh Phayam was a little paradise in the middle of the Andaman Sea, one of the most non touristic islands in Thailand, it had a few beaches with beautiful warm water, a small party every night, no crowds or cars and prices were ok... we met people that were planning to stay in Koh Phayam for a week and ended up staying there for a month. It was easy to get lost in time...

On our first day we used our motorbikes to explore the island, we drove to the Long Beach (other side of the island) and enjoyed a great day on the huge white sand beach. On the way to the beach, Maria and Clohe learned how to drive the motorbike, Maria liked it so much that she kept driving for the rest of the day... we returned the motorbikes in the afternoon so we finished our day walking back 2/3km to Buffalo Bay. When we arrived, Abby was already there waiting for us.

On our second day, now without motorbikes, we relaxed at the beach all day.. there was a transe party that night so we tried not to get too tired.. we bought some drinks in the small store next to our camping "resort" and simply relaxed.. the party wasn't the typical transe party where everybody is there to dance and enjoy the music... it was much more commercial with guys hitting on girls all the time but it was still nice..

Obviously the next day, we all woke up a bit hangover and tired... we chilled out in our beach and laughed about last night stories... the day ended up with an "all you can eat" beach barbecue organized by our camping "resort". We ate a lot of fish, squid, fruits, rice.. everything that we never eat because it is usually expensive for our budget. Everything was really perfect until one crazy cat decided to ruin my night... the cat probably felt my fear and decided to come after me... obviously I panicked and ran straight to my tent hoping to be safe but against all the odds.. the crazy cat JUMPED inside the tent... I don't remember being so nervous in my life... all my body was shaking and I couldn't hold the tears... a true panic attack... after a few minutes calming down, we went to the restaurant to play cards... the cat showed up a few times but nothing serious happened...

Next day, maybe due to the incident with the crazy cat, I woke up a little bored and not wiling to do much... Pedro, on the other side, went to snorkel the entire morning with Clohe and Khai, a cool guy that we met on the day that we arrived on the island. In the afternoon we all went to the northern beach so that Maria could see monkeys... we walked a bit through jungle but none of us was that confortable in walking in the jungle in flipflops so we ended up going through normal road. The northern beach was beautiful and we were able to see a lot of tucans (no monkeys tough). We enjoyed our last sunset in Koh Phayam with a great beer, during the sunset, we met a french couple that had exactly our story... they were also living in US (NYC) and they also gave up on the green card process for the exact same reasons as we did and they were now travelling around the world.. it was great to have someone that completely understood our reasons.

Next day we packed really early in order to go on the first boat to Ranong. It was really really hard to say goodbye.. especially to Maria.. but it was time to move on.. we were now on our way to Krabi in the south of Thailand.

Krabi was for us a strategic point to stay, it was a cheap city to sleep and it had the perfect location to connect to several islands... we arrived in Krabi with the perfect plan... on the first day we would rent a motorbike to visit the Tiger Cave Temple and the Emerald Pool and on our second day we would go on an organized trip to seven islands where were would be able to snorkel in beautiful turquoise waters... after that, we would have to decide if we wanted to go to Koh Phi Phi or start going north.

As planned, we started our first day going to the tiger cave temple, to reach the top we had to climb 1237 steps... a task that ended up being very hard but obviously we couldn't give up. More or less half way, we met a guy that had forgotten his keys on the motorbike so he was definitely worst than us! The temple was nice with a huge bell and Buddha.

After the temple we started our way to the Emerald Pool and this is when all our plans went down...
In Thailand, motorbikes are expected to go on the side of the road and the information signs on the road are almost non existent and the ones that exist are in the Thai alphabet so it becomes impossible for us to read it. After an hour driving back and forward in a road under construction, trying to find the way to the Emerald Pool, our nerves started to rise, so the unbelievable happen... we had an accident...  fortunately it was nothing serious, it was more the adrenaline of the accident than anything else but even so we would not be able to make our plans happen. People were really nice to us when we crashed the bike, they gave us water, allowed us into their house and one lady even went to the pharmacy to get some alcohol, betadine and a few other things to help us... another guy even called the ambulance but, as we said before, it wasn't serious so we just got back on the bike and started to drive back home. At the end Pedro had a bunch of wounds in his right leg, hand and shoulder and I had a lot of pain in my ribs and a few bruises. We couldn't believe what had happen.. we never think this kind of things happen to us but it did and it couldn't have been much worst... yes, it ruined our plans... we didn't go to the Emerald Pool and obviously we didn't go to the seven islands to snorkel.. Pedro couldn't even think about putting is leg in the salted water... we ended up staying in Krabi three more days to fully recover but at one point we felt that we needed to start going north and since we were not going to the islands, we could enjoy Bangkok for a few days!

Krabi is for sure in our list when we are back to thailand in April, hopefully with no motorbike accidents :)