Hey so I know it's been a while since the first blog post, it's actually a lot harder than you'd think to find time and internet to do this, so hopefully I can keep them coming about twice a week, but we'll see... So I am now on the way to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, and I just left Bangkok and did a quick day trip to Ayutthaya. So this will cover the last few days in Bangkok, which were actually kind of quiet, and the trip to Ayutthaya.
Duck and rice, the breakfast of champions. They don't distinguish between meals here, so for breakfast people eat the same stuff as for lunch and dinner. So I get food from a pretty good duck shop from across the street. Still haven't settled for cornflakes from the hostel, but we'll see how long I last...
Wat Traimit. Today was spent seeing all the touristy stuff in Bangkok, which mostly consists of wats (Buddhist temples).
Largest golden Buddha in the world. 5.5 tons of solid gold, worth about 250 million dollars. I'm not impressed.
Grilled bananas in coconut syrup. Good street snack.
Huge reclining buddha statue in Wat Pho. 43 m long (140 ft).
From the other end.
More buddhas. This day was filled with so many buddhas.
I chilled in this temple in Wat Pho for like an hour, cause I was exhausted and it was carpeted and had a fan. It was also interesting to watch Thai people pray to buddha, and watch the guard yell at people for letting their feet face the buddha. In Thai culture it is very bad to face your feet to someone.
Wat Arun. This place was really old and had some of the steepest stairs I've ever seen. At least a 75 degree angle.
It was more of a rock climb. It was pretty funny watching some tourists struggle to climb it and hold on for dear life once they reached the top, only to realize that now they had to go back down.
My touristy day was capped off with the best pad thai in Bangkok, from Thipsamai Pad Thai. They make the pad thai then they wrap it in a super thin, fast cooked layer of egg. Then you cut open the egg outer shell and the pad thai just comes oozing out. I ordered and finished seconds before my two friends finished their first. Each plate was 70 baht (a little over 2 dollars).
The next day, we went on a day trip to see the river Kwae, of American movie fame. The actual bridge was not that cool, it was just a bridge, but the rest of the day was really fun. I went with Ivan and Rohit, two friends I met in Bangkok. Ivan is from Ukraine, but lives in San Francisco. He quit his job and has been traveling for the last 11 months, starting in London, then making his way across Europe, through Russia, and down through China to SE Asia. How much money has he spent doing all this traveling? Around $9,000. He spends about a grand a month. In total. That is less than the rent I was just paying in Boston, and that includes food, accommodations, transport, beer, activities... So all of you out there who keep saying to yourself that you need to keep working 80 hour jobs so you can get rich and travel the world, you really don't need to be that rich. Just save up a few thousand and you can travel for months.
Cute baby tiger.
Elephants!
Me trying to ride one. They are huge, amazing animals. My guide said the girl I was riding was 16 years old, which is young, as elephants can live over 100, and she weighed about 2 tons, which is smaller than the males. She can also get up to speeds of abut 25 mph if scared enough to run fast (Elephants don't naturally run much, they are pretty slow normally). When Usain Bolt set the world record for the 100 m, his top speed was 27 mph. So these tanks are pretty fast.
King of the jungle. Or something.
This is the house of one of the elephant workers, right beside the camp.
Chilling on a bamboo raft.
Went trekking to a waterfall. Past the waterfall was some jungle. I hadn't done much physical activity for about a week so I decided to go for a run through the jungle. I ran about a mile and a half into the Thai jungle, alone, expecting at any second a tiger or monkey to jump out at me. It was a little scary but mostly awesome.
This was the clearing before the jungle started. The Thai hills are beautiful.
A weightroom I found in the middle of a park in Bangkok. This place was one of my favorite weightrooms I've ever used. Just lifting rusty old weights with no numbers in the dirt, in 90 degree heat. Just a great place to workout.
Too strong for weak Thai weight machines. I snapped the cord.
This crocodile/lizard thing was walking around in the park just beside the weightroom.
I went to Chinatown for dinner, and stopped at a seafood street food restaurant. You can see here my feast of crab fried rice, grilled prawns, and shark fin soup, with a fresh coconut to drink. This was the first time I have ever had shark fin soup, and will be the last. Not because it was so terrible, it was actually not bad (although not that good, just tasted like beef soup with some rubbery, fatty meat in it). More because I can't condone paying for something that comes from illegal fishing of endangered shark, where they catch the shark, cut off its fin, and throw it back in the water to die, as it is unable to swim without its fin. That is why I will never again pay for shark fin soup, and almost didn't even try it this time, but figured the people trying shark fin once are much less of the problem than the consistent eaters.
This is durian fruit. This is what comes out of those bug green spiky things from the last blog. It is hugely popular here, but has a very strange taste, and most westerners don't like it. It also has such a pungent smell that many public areas have 'no durian' signs. I had some for breakfast, along with some mangosteens, rambutan, and lychees.
I finally gave in, after a week of Thai street food, and went to Burger King...
You see these little dried shrimp in a ton of Thai dishes. This is in my pad thai.
Crab yellow curry over rice. Amazing street food. 60 baht (2 dollars).
After 6 days in Bangkok (which was probably too many), I decided to take a day trip to Ayutthaya, which is the old capitol of the Thai kingdom from the 14th to the 18th centuries, when a Burmese invasion forced them to move the capitol to Bangkok. Ayutthaya is only a couple hours north of Bangkok, so it was a good stop on my way farther north to Chiang Mai. This picture is one of the od wats. There were so many that I don't remember their names.
View from above.
All over the place in Ayutthaya there were congregations of these plastic chickens. I figured out it had something to do with offerings to Buddha for good luck. Or something.
Another sweet old wat. This place really did feel like the Thai version of the Roman ruins.
Another huge reclining buddha.
Cute little puppy of the lady who drove me around in her tuk tuk all day. She said the dog was 151 days old.
Stray dog chewing on some wax. Which reminds me, there are stray dogs EVERYWHERE in Thailand. I saw one in Bangkok cross an 8 lane highway, stopping knowingly at the last lane which was a turn lane and waiting for a car to stop for him. Pretty amazing.
Big ol wat.
Some Indians filming a movie at one of the wats. The bollywood version of Tomb Raider I guess.
Another huge buddha.
The Thai version of the godswood.
Taking the night train to Chiang Mai, I get a nice comfy seat for the 12 hour ride. But I'm sure I'll pass out easily, I was walking around all day in the 90 degree sun, and now I have AC and a cushioned seat.
I'll try to write from Chiang Mai, depending on internet. I am couchsurfing with a local guy named Nink. I'll let you know how it goes. Until next time,
Peace
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