It is safe to say that my Spring Festival vacation was quite possibly the greatest time of my life. I had unforgettable experiences, met amazing people, and saw some of the most beautiful and interesting places in the world.
There is no possible way to fit my entire Spring Festival vacation story into one single blog post, so I will have many blog posts about each place that I visited. All of these blog posts will be appearing within the next two weeks.
So… Let's begin….
Bangkok
There are no words for the excitement that we all felt the moment we landed in Bangkok. We landed at about 8 PM on a Thursday night. We took the metro into the center of Bangkok and got off at the stop where our hostel was. As we went up the escalator we could hear loud music and a lot of people out on the street. We were excited and also a little nervous… As the escalator came to an end, we realized exactly what was going on. We got dropped off in the dead center of a protest….
There must have been thousands of people roaming the street, camping out, selling patriotic trinkets, etc. We were very skeptical about the location of our hostel, but we had just arrived. We wanted to get to the hostel, drop our things off, and begin our long awaited vacation.
Trying to find the hostel was a completely different story. The street that it as on was long and very busy. In fact, it wasn't even on the main street, it was in a small alley just off the street. Just imagine three guys carrying giant backpacks maneuvering through masses of people looking for a tiny little sign that blended in with hundreds of other little tiny signs. Yeah… just about impossible.
Thankfully the protest area started to thin out as we walked down the street towards our hostel. However, there were still thousands of people walking around.
We finally made it to the hostel after walking around for a good hour or so. We checked in, dropped off our things, and went straight to the bar street.
Walking around Bangkok was absolutely insane. Every where we walked we were offered to see sex shows, ping pong shows, etc. Ping Pong shows didn't sound very appealing… At first we had no idea what it was exactly. No problem though, the guys on the street advertising for them had binders full of pictures…. Didn't really need to see that. I'll let you google that one for more information….
There were also groups of girls lining the streets wearing almost no clothes. Older ladies would be standing in the middle of the street attracting tourists and asking them which one they liked and telling them the price. Crazy stuff, I had never seen anything like that before. I also did not partake in buying a girl for the night…
We found a bar, got some drinks, and the rest of the night is history. Won't go into the details… but we had a good time.
The very next day, after waking up around 1 PM, we decided to walk around Bangkok and do some tourist things.
We first made our way to China Town…
Bangkok had so many different channels just like this throughout the city.
Making our way into China Town...
There were people everywhere. The area was also decorated with all sorts of New Year banners and lanterns as you can see in the pictures above.
We then headed towards the river to catch a boat to some temples that were near by.
The best way to get around Bangkok is by the river and channels. The streets are completely packed full of cars and it is impossible to get around. The boats are by far the easiest way to get places quickly.
The boarding area...
The views from the river were gorgeous...
We eventually made our way to a very impressive temple. Every inch of the temple was extremely intricate. Almost everything was gold plated and had beautiful designs covering the walls, ceilings, and the temples themselves.
The main feature of the temple was the laying Buddha. It was massive…
And more from around the temple…
The temple must have had hundreds of little Buddhas scattered throughout the area
Monuments such as the one below were also abundant…
Animals were also out and about. This dog seemed to like the area a lot…
There were several seperate shrines for different Buddhas…
And finally the temple at sunset…
That night we went to a very well known roof top bar. I think that most of you reading this have probably seen it in the movie…. The HANGOVER…
The scene in The Hangover Prt. 2 where Chow is arrested by the federal agents at the top of the hotel building was the same bar that we went to.
The bar was extremely classy. The drinks were more on the expensive side as you can imagine. They even had a "Hangover-tini" which was some green drink. I obviously had to get that drink… It was pretty tasty.
The bar had a live band as well as a giant dome that was very well lit… It was pretty spectacular
The views from the bar were remarkable. We were truly looking out over all of Bangkok…
Things did go a little down hill while I was in Bangkok… I got a little sick from the food…
I think it was this dish right here…
This was hands down the spiciest dish I have ever eaten. The cook told me it was very spicy; however, after eating so much Sichuan food I blew off his warnings and ordered the dish anyways. He was laughing at me while I was struggling to eat it…
The sickness didn't settle in until much later and lasted for about 36 hours… Thankfully I was able to do more sightseeing before I started to feel sick.
We ended up walking down a back alley and we saw a very different side of Bangkok…
The Democracy Monument… At the start of the protests this was a very bad area to be in. By the time we arrived in Bangkok this protest area had been cleared out and moved into other areas. However, there was still a lot of evidence of protests happening in areas nearby. Protestors uprooted a lot of plants and had even torn apart the center divide of a major road. It was peaceful while we were there though, thankfully…
We kept walking around and passed by another protest area in order to get to a nearby temple. As we were walking a nice man on a motorcycle stopped to talked to us. He was telling us about the protest around the Democracy Monument and where it had been moved. He told us that we should turn around and go another way to get to the temple. The protest site that we were walking towards was apparently one of the more dangerous sites. He was very nice and we were very thankful that he took the time to talk to us and inform us about the protest site ahead of us.
This is the temple we were heading towards...
And now pictures from the temple…
The views were breathtaking. We got there as the temple was closing so we were unable to go inside. It really didn't matter to us since the views were so amazing.
We left the temple to head back into the downtown area. It was starting to get very dark outside and we hopped on the metro. Of course, as we got off the metro, we arrived in a huge protest area. We decided to backtrack a bit and walk around the protest. It was a much busier protest than any that we had seen before. We walked around to another street and made it about five or six blocks before we went back to the main street. When we made it back onto the main street we were in the very heart of the protest…
We arrived at the main street again and immediately noticed that we were in the middle of the protest…. So we continued on towards our destination.
There were people everywhere. We could barely walk through the crowds to get to the end of the street. As we did get closer to the end of the street we came to a stage where various people were giving speeches. The crowds were cheering as the speakers yelled into the microphones. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before.
We walked all the way up to the stage and then eventually passed it in order to get to the monorail. It was pretty intense...
Later in the night I finally started to feel really sick. I spent that night and the next day in bed. I had to use the bathroom every 30 minutes… Damn Thai food…
Thankfully I brought some medication for stomach problems and it made me feel a lot better. Once I was able to eat again, I could finally enjoy the rest of my time in Bangkok.
We went out and partied in an area of Bangkok that was predominantly foreigners. I ended up finding a sports bar that was going to show the football games. I stayed up all night, drinking basically, and went to the bar at about 5:45 AM to watch the 49ers and Seahawks play. There were three people at the bar when I got there. As time went on a lot more people came. I met some pretty nice people while I was there. A lot of the people were from the Bay Area. Thankfully there were no Seahawks fans there….
Obviously, the game was very devastating and I was pretty depressed all day long. I was also extremely tired…
The day of the game was also our last day in Bangkok. We had to check out by 11 AM. By the time I left the bar it was 10:30 AM. There were no channels near the bar or my hostel so I would have to take a taxi… SYKE. Gridlock. Everywhere. The protests were certainly strangling the city. Traffic was becoming a major issue and there was no way that I would get back in time if I took a taxi…
The other efficient way to get anywhere in Bangkok is on the back of a motorcycle… My parents most definitely would not approve of this… But I was in a huge rush…
This motorcyclist was THE MAN. Oh my god he was good. He was weaving in and out of traffic. Several times we would get stuck and have to turn around and take a different route. Every time this happened he would say, "Fucking protests," and turn around. I would laugh and he would a little bit too.
I eventually made it back to the hostel and tipped the motorcyclist very well. I was extremely impressed with his maneuvering skills. I also felt bad because he had to ride so far out of the way multiple times because of the protests.
We planned to take an overnight train south to head towards our next destination; Kophangnan.
We still had the whole day to hangout… well everyone else did, I needed to sleep…
We went to the train station to buy tickets and the guys went to walk around Bangkok some more. I went to go find the cheapest bed that I could. And I found exactly that…
I walked into a very sketchy looking building and asked for a bed. It was 100 Baht for a bed for the afternoon. 100 Baht = 3 USD. So cheap, so shitty.
It literally looked like a crack den. I could care less though. I was exhausted and I needed to sleep.
Some pictures of the room…
It was pretty bad….
Next stop… Kophangnan
(coming soon...)
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