Bangkok Part 1

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A few weeks ago Hannah and I took a trip to Thailand and Malaysia. It was an amazing trip. We started in Bangkok, traveled down to the beach town of Hua Hin, and went further down to the extremely beautiful Thai island of Koh Tao. We crossed the border into Malaysia and landed in Penang, then down to Kuala Lumpur for a few days, and then back to Bangkok.

Stepping off the plane from Mumbai, Bangkok felt like stepping into the future. The new airport in Bangkok was clean, super modern and — god bless them — totally efficient. We spent our first day wandering around the area surrounding our hostel and then attempted to find our way to Chinatown. We are still not entirely sure if we made it, but the buildings were definitely decorated with chinese writing and there were roast ducks hanging in windows — who knows. Bangkok had some really great public transportation and we utilized just about all of them. We took taxis, buses, rickshaws (tuk-tuk), boats, and even the two-level sky train.

Our second full day in Bangkok we spent going to the various religious sites. We went to the Wat Phra Kaew home of the Emerald Buddha; the entire complex was unbelievable. Before entering the complex we were stopped by the king of Thailand's motorcade leaving the Grand Palace. We walked to the Wat Pho where the Reclining Buddha was, and after some wandering around lost a bit we found the Solid Gold Buddha. That night we made our way to Siam Square which is basically Bangkok's shopping mall epicenter. There must be something like eight, hyper-modern malls in this little area of the city, it's crazy. Let's just say, we enjoyed the air conditioning, a few Starbucks drinks and beef (finally!)cheeseburgers. Later that night we walked around our hostel and snacked on, what we think was the best thing about our trip: the street food.