We've never ventured very far before so this was our first long haul flight, we were a little bit nervous about the length of time we were going to be on the plane (approximately 12 hours of travelling in total!) However we need not have worried as the excitment of our holiday helped the boredom.
I never quite imagined just how hot it would be which sounds really daft but when I had saw photos of Thailand before it always looked a bit overcast and gloomy, when we were there though it was approximately 35 - 40 degrees celcius each day. Once we had checked into our hotel and had a shower we went out to explore Bangkok! We headed to Siam Square initially just to see what Bangkok had to offer before deciding we wanted to go for a Tuk Tuk ride to Nana Plaza. The driver though had different ideas and took us in the completely opposite direction which was annoying but we didn't let it dampen our mood. Instead we headed of to find a place to eat.
Speaking of eating, the food in Thailand was amazing. We were really lucky and only had an upset stomach on the last day so throughout our trip we just devoured everything that was put in front of us. This first evening we ate at a really nice authentic Thai restaurant which was so unbelievably cheap! A meal of around 4 dishes which we shared (2 mains and 2 sides) along with a couple of Chang beers was the equivalent of around £5-£10.. It was all absolutely delicious too! With a tummy full of lovely food and after 12 hours of travelling we decided to call it a night for a bright and early start the next day.
Day 2 arrived and as we were less tired we had a better idea of what we wanted to see. There were endless places in Bangkok I wanted to see, but as we had such little time we decided to cram as many of the important sights into the day as possible, starting with Chinatown.
Both Dave and I are really into our food so we both found Chinatown amazing. People would set up little stalls just about anywhere! You walked down the road and Thai women would be cooking various meals, we were a bit nervous about lack of refrigeration though so didn't try the street food. It was good in the sense that everything we wanted to see was quite close to each other, and if it wasn't then the transport systems were great. There were so many temples in Bangkok which really surprised me. Before we went we done a little bit of research and out of all the temples we knew we wanted to go to Wat Pho, or Reclining Buddha as it is also known so this is where we headed next...
The temple was amazing. From the outside I never really imagined how big it would be but you can see from the photos it was absolutely huge! Although Wat Pho was amazing it isn't a place you can spend hours - once you have seen it you have seen it.
After Wat Pho we decided to get a taxi to Khao San Road. We had heard some bad things about this area, with one of Dave's friends telling us that people would just grab you out of nowhere, but we never had any bother, it may be different on a night though. Khao San Road was definitely the most touristy area of Bangkok we went to. We found a nice little bar, had a couple of drinks and some lunch and people watched for a little while as l
It was starting to get to mid-afternoon by this point and Khao San Road was in the opposite direction to where wanted to be so what better way to travel back to the hotel then to go by boat! Altogether we paid 30 baht (around 50p) for what was probably around a 30-45 minute journey and definitely one of the highlights of our holiday. It was not something that was top of my agenda but Dave really wanted to go on it and I'm so glad I did, in fact I wish I had travelled more by boat!
After we had arrived back where we needed to be we decided to go to some bars and have a few drinks. We had heard good and bad things about Soi Cowboy but felt like we needed to experience it and it was a little bit surreal. Basically Soi Cowboy is a whole street of outdoor bars, there is a seedy side though and if you go inside it's basically girls dancing on tables, "Ping Pong shows" etc. You could see men - usually older men - sitting having a drink and being hounded by Thai barmaids and the prostitutes who also work here. What I didn't like about this street, as harmless as it was when we were there, was that girls would walk around with numbers around their neck clearly wanting men to "choose them." It was a good night but definitely the side to Bangkok which you hear about sometimes.
And that was it! The next day we woke up and headed to the airport to catch a flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai for the next chapter of our holiday. I was surprised by how much I liked Bangkok and was quite disappointed once we had left that we didn't spend more time there. If we were in that area of the world again then we would consider doing a stop over here to spend a couple more days exploring. Although we done so much in our time here there is so much more to see and do which we just didn't have the time to do.
