Hello Everyone!
I hope you have had a chance to see my pictures from Da Nang, Hoi An, and Halong Bay. They are two posts previous. Also, check out the details and photos from Cambodia i just posted!!
After travelling around for 6 weeks, i had to start teaching again on Jan. 2nd. Luckily for me, after only two weeks, i got two weeks off for Tet, or lunar new year. I took the time off to travel back to Phu Quoc island, which i visited first in September, and to Thailand.
Isabel and I spent nine days in Thailand. We flew into Bangkok late at night, and took a taxi to the heart of the backpacker's district, where we stayed at the Peachy Guest House, for 400 Thai Baht, 13 bucks. The next morning, after sleeping in, we went and explored the famous tourist areas of Bangkok. We were not disappointed. We found some amazing and cheap Pad Thai, great thai iced coffee, and even better Thai Massage. After wasting the afternoon away, we walked around a vast market, trying various street foods and looking at all the neat things for sale. After a busy day spent in Bangkok, we took a local bus to the northern bus terminal,and hopped on a 7 hour night bus to Sukhothai. We got in around 5am, and our guest house graciously let us crash out in our room for a few hours.
Sukhothai is an ancient capital of Thailand. It's very small, and sleepy, and has some great ruins. They are very similar to the ruins at Angkor Wat in some respects. But there scope is much smaller, and they are much less crowded. Isabel and I rented bikes and explored the ruins in the early afternoon, returing to town to get dinner at the night market.
The next morning we hopped on yet another bus to take us the beautiful town of Chiang Mai, thailands northern tourist capital. Isabel and I had planned to spend a couple of nights in Chaing Mai, and then explore another northern town, but we ended up spending 4 nights there, we liked it so much!!
Two of our friends from Wesleyan are living and teaching in Chiang Mai, so we got to spend some time with them catching up. CM is a town of many pagodas, and we spent a decent amount of time seeing the various pagodas and talking to a few monks. Most temples organize "monk chats" where you can talk to a few monks about their lives, and they get to practice their English.
The shopping and street food in Thailand blows Vietnam out of the water. We ate the majority of our meals on the street, as it was cheaper and fun. Isabel was able to find plenty of vegan options. There are two night markets in CM, one is mostly for food, and the other shopping. We had great sauted veggies, pad thai, and yummy savory taro cakes. We also drank a lot of the local beer, Chang. There are a profusion of 7/11's in Chiang Mai, so we mostly bought our beers there, and swilled them on the street. Thankfully Thailand, like Vietnam, has no open container laws. We also checked out some great bars, including a reggae bar where i ran into an old friend from high school, small world.
Isabel and I rented a motor bike for two days, and ventured into the mountains outside the city. We hiked up to a beautiful waterfall with the help of a guide(ie we paid him to take us past the "do not enter sign.") We continued up the mountain to the beauitufl pagoda at the top, and then came down to a beautiful sunset. The next day we took our motorbike to some hot springs 30k outside of town. We soaked for a while in a nice 105degree pool, and then had a picnic lunch next to the actual springs. They sell baskets of eggs to hard boil in the 215 degree waters. Mine came out soft boiled, but i ate them anyhow.
The rest of the time we just kinda hung out. We wanted to trek or look at elephants, but they were a little too expensive. We got a lot of delicious fruit smoothies, something missing in Vietnam. Thailand has much more western influence than Vietnam as of yet. There are many more cars, due to the relative wealth in Thailand. There are also tons of cute western style cafe's and coffee shops.
We took a night train back to Bangkok on Friday night. Saturday morning we got off the train and visited the vast weekend market in Bangkok. We wandered through this market for a good 3 hours, looking at all the bags, food, trinkets, etc. for sale. The place has its own map, and it was raining, so we stayed in the covered part. After 3 hours, we came back to the start, and realized we had traveled in a big circle. We finished off our last day in Thailand by heading to China town, and seeing the gold Buddha there.
Isabel and I made great use of Bangkok's awesome public transportation while we were there. They have both a subway and elevated sky train. We took the sky train to the airport, only $1 each way, you're there in 25 min. Our last surprise of Thailand, we got to the ticket counter to check our bags, and were told that the flight was over booked. So they bumped us up to Business class for the flight back to HCMC! For once, i wished that our flight had been a little longer. Qatar airways is NICE, and it was the cheapest option.
 |
| Khao San road by day, backpacker central. |
 |
| Lots of rivers in BK |
 |
| On a phone booth in BKK |
 |
| Khao San road by night |
 |
| Happy Buddha |
 |
| Chedi |
 |
| Looking across at an ancient Chedi(the pointy thing). |
 |
| offerings. |
 |
| Biking around the ancient city of Sukhothai |
 |
| So true... |
 |
| Shiny Temple |
 |
| Big Tree, Little Pagoda |
 |
| The ruined chedi |
 |
| Those elephants have a heavy load. |
 |
| All the trees at this pagoda had saying like this. |
 |
| Evening Prayer |
 |
| Monk-Mobile? |
 |
| 1st Fall |
 |
| First fall |
 |
| Sign with the distances to the different falls. |
 |
| 2nd of the 9 falls |
 |
| Top of the waterfall!! |
 |
| Shiny Wat atop the mountain |
 |
| This elephant looks happy |
 |
| Sunset over Wat Chadi Pran |
