Last few days in BKK plus Kwai and Ayutthaya

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

First blog post. As you probably know at his point, I am on an Asian adventure. I will be backpacking for the next 2.5 months through Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. I've been asked by a lot of people to keep them updated on my travels, so I figured I would delve into the blogosphere. I don't really like writing though... So I'll mostly just post a lot of pictures. And after the first 2 days I have a feeling that most of the pictures will be of food. So far the food's been amazing. You can get a heaping plate of pad thai off the street for about 50 baht (less than 2 dollars).

So I started in Bangkok. Actually I started in San Fran, and had to get to Bangkok, and from house to hostel it took about 29 hours...

One way ticket to Bangkok

Wearing a money belt. I know I'm pretty cool. I feel naked without my wallet in my pocket.

Shanghai Pudong layover.

Nothing like a good bag of duck neck at the airport.

Korean food at the airport. Getting ready for 3 months of Asian food.

This guy is a BOSS.

King Bhumibol. This guy is the world's longest reigning head of state, going on 67 years, since he was crowned in 1946. But the state of Thai politics during that whole time is anything but constant, as there have been 17 different versions of the constitution since the country was first declared a constitutional monarchy in 1939. And each time it was rewritten after a coup overthrew the previous government, and rewritten in a way as to shift power to the winning side. So that's 17 coups in 74 years, or a coup every 4 and a half years, the last one being in 2006, to overthrow prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was accused of corruption and nepotism, and who is currently still in exile. Ironically 5 years later his sister was elected PM. But before he was exiled he was the first Thai PM to serve a full 4 year term, in almost a century of having PMs. So politics are pretty crazy here. Anyway that's it for my history lesson, back to pictures.

The first place I went in Bangkok was I went to the Chatuchak weekend market. It's just a huge market only on the weekends wit food, clothes, pets, really anything. It was as far as the eye can see. I spent about 2 hours walking around turning randomly and I never saw the same thing twice.

Mini turtles (for pets not to eat).

Fried worms (to eat).

Fried bugs. Mmm...

Mango with sticky rice and coconut milk poured on top. So good...

The new hype.

These little guys are on sale in the pet section of the market.

Refreshing coconut. This cost 20 baht (about 70 cents). I'll mention the prices of things occasionally, just cause everything is so cheap.

Durian. This is a crazy weird fruit. 

To get the fruit out the guy first starts whacking it with a stick, and listening to the sound it makes. If it sounds good, then he tries to cut it. Sometimes he can't cut it well, so I guess it's not good for fruit. Then eventually he finds one with fruit in it, and the rest he just throws out. Then he cuts off a little corner of the thick shell, and exposes the fruit to the woman in line. She then sticks her finger inside the fruit, and if she likes how it feels she will buy it, otherwise they throw it out. They probably threw out more than half of them while I was watching. 

This is what's inside. It almost has a custardy texture. It tastes pretty weird, kinda like a slightly tart, slightly sweet, thick butter. 

Durian is a little too much to handle on its own, but with some sticky rice and warm coconut milk on top, it was so aroi (delicious in Thai). And yes, even in Thailand they can't figure out r's and l's, so they pronounce this like "alloy".

Rambutan. Another weird fruit that was really good.

This is what it looks like on the inside. Kinda tastes like a mix between lychee and pear.

Gac fruit. Tastes about as good as it sounds. It has absolutely no sweetness, which is pretty weird for a fruit.

Thai cupcakes. Warmed up.

Mangosteen. Probably my favorite fruit I have had here.

This is what the inside looks like. Tastes like mango only more tart.

The lychees weren't that good.

I have no idea what these things were. They looked kinda like brown, misshapen lychees. They tasted like apple with a hint of stinky cheese.

Tamarind. This is what gives pad thai its sweetness. They make little candies out of it, which are a little spicy. Tastes similar to ginger.

From the 7-11, which are everywhere. Tastes like flowers.

Panoramic of the Or Tor Kor market.

Weird fruits.

Fat ass bananas.

Not sure what this ones called, and didnt get to try it. Looks pretty weird though.

Mangoes...

Sweet corn milk. Tastes like it sounds. Which isn't bad.

At the market a nice old Thai woman saw me wondering aimlessly looking American and came up and started talking. She lived in LA for 15 years, and spoke really good English. Her name was Anne, and said to call her Auntie Anne. I had lunch with her, and she told me what food to get, which was spicy basil chicken fried rice with an egg on the side, and said that was the go-to for Thai people looking for a quick meal. It was really good, but almost burned my toungue off. I went through two big bottles of water trying to deal with the spiciness. She seemed amused by my struggle though. She gave me her number and said to contact her anytime I need anything or have any questions.

I've met a lot of really nice people here, especially Thai people. Most Thai people love to talk to a farang (foreigner) and really want to help out and make sure you are doing ok. But there are two kinds of people in Bangkok. The other kind is the type of people who deal in tourist related industries. Taxi drivers, shop salesmen, massage workers, etc. And it seems like the vast majority of these people are really just looking to scheme some money out of the farangs. Which gets obnoxious pretty quickly. But as long as you know how to deal with these people and avoid scams, the rest of the Thais seem very very open and friendly.

My hostel, Lub D. I've met some cool backpackers here, mostly people are from Britain, some Aussies, an American here and there.

Got a Thai massage. 

Thai massage is kinda like a mix between massage and yoga. They stretch you out a bunch while the massage you. Which is cool, but I was so jetlagged from the 13 hours time difference that I passed out mid massage...

Met some friends through couchsurfing, and went out on Khaosan road. This place is nuts, just full of backpackers partying. I met up with a Thai girl named Dear, who was awesome, and went out with her and her friends. But I got there about 20 minutes before her, so I had a beer at a cafe on the side of the road and had 20 minutes of really interesting people watching. It's like backpackers don't really care about anything so they all are just trying to be crazier and weirder than everyone else. Which makes for great people watching. People in this picture are from Germany, England, Thailand, Austria, Austria, USA, from left to right. And we were also hanging out with a guy from Ukraine and a few more locals not pictured. A pretty good assortment.

You don't drink out of bottles in Thailand. Only buckets full of booze. 

They are selling these scorpions and other bugs to all the stupid drunk tourists...

...of which I am one.

The bartender is smoking hukkah with us. All of the people who work at the bar we are it have a shirt that says across the front "WE DO NOT CHECK ID". 

Drunk Pad Thai and some chicken skewers off the street outside the bar. Perfect drunk food.

Cool little buddhist temple.

Breakfast. Really good, really fresh fish straight from the Chao Phraya river.

Tuk tuk ride. These are mini 3 wheel taxis that are everywhere in Bangkok. They will take you across the city for like 40 baht (a little more than a dollar). 

This is a block of grass jelly. No idea what it's actually made of.

They shave it up and put it in a drink. So it's kinda like bubble tea only instead of bubbles its little slivers of jello. And it tastes like licorice. Sounds weird, and is, but is actually pretty tasty.

Coconut and egg sweet crepe taco. Delicious. Where do they come up with this stuff?

Pork skewer.

Real Thai iced tea.

MBK shopping center. Had to buy some pants so I can go to see the buddhists temples tomorrow, which require long pants. This mall is gigantic, 7 or 8 stories, packed with people.

Dinner was Pad See Ew and Tom Yum soup. The soup was really spicy and really flavorful with shrimp. The noodles with chicken were bland but delicious. The two went really well together.

Well I'm exhausted so I'm gonna pass out. The jetlag is brutal and my strategy of drinking through it from last night is not happening, so I can barely keep my eyes open. So until next time, peace from the other side of the world.