Well this first day in Thailand was pretttty crazy! The trip over was long, but I slept for a lot of the flights. I also read a whole book and started another. Being in Tokyo was pretty awesome! Loved it. Too bad my 4-hour layover turned into a 6-hour layover. On the last leg of the trip—6 ½ hour flight from Tokyo to Bangkok—I was on a row of four seats. The two next to me were free and the last seat on the row was an older Thai man. He was sooo cool. Spoke no English, but when I tried to get some sleep, I felt a tug tug tug on my pant leg—he pulled my legs toward him so that I could take up the whole row hahaha. He put up his arm rest, too, so that my feet were pretty much in his space, and then he put pillows and blankets on me lol. So nice. I already loved Thai people just from him. In BKK airport, I quickly found Janella. We got our bags (sigh of relief that they arrived), and took a public taxi with two girls I met on my flights. Our taxi was bright pink—most of them are—barbie pink haha. We got to our hostel—Khaosan Baan Thai—around 1:30 or so. We got into our room (AC! Hooray) and then decided to go walk around a bit. We checked out 7/11—pretty cool to see all the brands I’m familiar with written in Thai. We didn’t sleep until around 3:30. This morning we woke up around 7:30, got ready, had breakfast. Egg, sausage, and toast (with cute little smiley faces burnt onto the bread). We just started walking around, not really heading anywhere in particular. The first thing we did was….get a Thai massage. 100 baht aka $3 for a ½ hour Thai massage. Man, that was probably the most painful ½ hour of my life hahaha. We went into some upstairs room (where there was awkwardly a naked man with a towel over most his body) and got those suuuper painful massages. I seriously wanted to cry at many points during the massage lol but I thought to myself, “Alright, I gotta get the full effect of the Thai massage. I’m sure it’ll feel great after.” Nope. It still hurts lol. Everytime I thought I’d gotten through the worst parts, the masseuse would do something else even more painful—using her elbows and putting all her weight on the most tender spots lol. I thought for sure my whole back would be purple with bruises. Also, she tried to bend me in some crazy ways my body’s definitely not accustomed to lol. Anyway, can’t complain about a $3 massage, right? After that, we checked off another must-do: mango sticky rice for 100baht. De-licious. Loved that. We just wandered around while eating it. We stopped in front of a map—what a blessing! This Thai man came over and was so amazingly nice and helpful. We didn’t even ask for his help, but he started telling us all about what we could do, the cheapest way to do it, etc. And he called over a tuk-tuk for us and told the man to take us to a bunch of places for 30 baht. Man, that guy made our day for SURE, but we didn’t even know just how grateful we’d be for his advice at that point. Our tuk-tuk driver was super nice and cute. He took us to the Temple of the Standing Buddha, Temple of the Sitting Buddha, a silks store, the Marble Temple, aNOTHER tailor store (where we bought loofah soap for 200 baht). We didn’t really want to buy the soap, but the guy pulled out a bag, all ready to put our purchase in, so we both bought some haha. Great sales technique. Then our driver took us to an awesome jewelry place—it’s set up kind of like an assembly line/museum sort of thing. We got to see how they cut the stones and buff and polish them. So awesome. The sapphire and emerald, I believe, are from here in Thailand. Then we got to see all sorts of amazingly beautiful stones—opal, amethyst, topaz, sapphire, ruby, garnet, diamond, emerald, etc. I loved it. And then…the display room where Janella and I both bought rings. I got my birth stone—amethyst. Dunno when I’ll wear it, but it’s pretty awesome. It was like 2,800 baht, but it’s really unique and a great souvenir of Thailand. They also had an utterly incredible souvenir shop on the way out. Best shop ever. We both bought a TON of stuff. But it was Thai handicraft, and it was so cheap! I’m pretty dang happy with what I bought—definitely don’t need to buy any more souvenirs lol. Meanwhile, our driver is just waiting for us. At all these stops. We took hours of his time, and we wre only supposed to pay him 30 baht? Next he took us to this clothing tailor shop. I woulda loved it if I were in need of suits and all that. It’s a way better deal than buying tailored clothes in the U.S. And that’s somewhere I’d definitely buy my wedding dress. Lastly, we went to the dock to take a boat tour of the river and canals. We were sad to say bye to our tuk-tuk driver, so we asked him to come pick us up tomorrow morning lol. We gave him 200baht instead of 30. For the boat ride, we paid 800 baht—pricey. But it was really cool and unique. We got to see other parts of Bangkok, and see how people live along the canals. We also got to feed these huge fish with some bread we bought from monks. There were tons of fish! We also got to buy some apple bananas from a floating market man. Yum. That boat ride was an hour long. After that we bought a couple more souvenirs from a very nice Thai lady. The Thai people are so very kind. Nella and I have been practicing our Thai—the two phrases we know lol: Sawadee ka and Kop khun ka. It was extremely hot outside. Muggy heat..yuck. Felt like being back in Santa Cruz, and for Janella, Manaus. Oh, at one point we used some toilets around the city. No toiletpaper. Instead they have hoses. Yep. Hoses. Interesting. Last thing we did before returning to our hostel was to go eat at a Pizza place not too far from the hostel. It was very good food. Now we’re back here at the hostel, super tired and not really wanting to leave the A/C of the room lol. Not quite sure what we’ll do tonight. Or tomorrow. Or Sunday. But we’ll figure something out. I love Thailand. It’s so amazing here. Already I’ve had such a great time. The temples are absolutely incredible. So ornate and unique. Nothing you’d see in the West. The people are so kind and helpful, even though we don’t speak a lick of Thai. The food has been delicious so far, and everything is dirt cheap.  |
