We came together to meet in Bangkok; three flights starting from Denver, one from Chiang Mai and three from London. This year Friendsgiving began in Bangkok for Sarena, Becky and me and we were ready to see what Bangkok had to offer. We were meeting the rest of the gang in Chiang Mai and they were doing Hong Kong first.
I had heard mixed opinions on Bangkok and I’m glad I didn’t listen to the negative ones because I really enjoyed it. I mean they had tuk tuks so how could you not like the city? After my first tuk tuk ride it became my favorite mode of transportation. Bangkok also has lots of wats which also means there are lots of Buddhas.
We started our day by hoping on a tuk tuk and getting a tour. Our driver took us to three wats and then dropped us by the Chao Phraya River to go on a boat tour of the canals—yes you read that correctly Bangkok has canals. They also took us to a clothing store, which was clearly one of their friends, where we could get dresses and suits made. Though you can tell this is why they charge so little, 5 baht or 14 cents, for the ride in the hopes that you will buy something they were very friendly when we said we weren’t interested, so don’t be worried if this happens to you.
First we stopped at Wat Intharawihan aka the standing Buddha, next the lucky Buddha, and finally the reclining Buddha which is in Wat Pho. Then we headed to the water. I loved the long tail boats. They took us around the different canals and we were able to buy beers from the ladies selling tourists items on boats. Don’t fall for the scam of buying the driver a beer. We did and I’m 99.9 percent positive they just keep it unopened and eventually hand them back to the lady. You will see in my posts about this trip a common theme of Becky and I falling for the tricks—Sarena was the wise one.
For sunset we made our way over to the Banyan Tree Hotel. Another tip is that traffic in Bangkok is awful so make sure to give yourself a lot of time. We pretty much missed the sunset, and we gave ourselves over an hour to get someone where that should have taken 30 minutes, but it was raining at that time anyways so the roof top wasn’t open. Instead we went to the Latitude Lounge which is just a few floors down and covered. Here we treated ourselves to Thai sparkling wine, which to our surprise it was actually pretty good. Luckily the weather cleared up after we finished our bottle of bubbly and we were able to go up to the Moon Bar which puts you on the 61st floor. It was an incredible view. We had been traveling for one day and already needed to treat ourselves. We are really good backpackers. Second tip is to make sure you have the location on a map—our driver had a really hard time understanding us and that added to our delayed arrival.
Day one in Bangkok was amazing and we had Khaosan Road to come home to. Khaosan road deserves its own post so standby.
