Thailand

This blog will give you a general run down of our time in Thailand and share a few of the things we enjoyed while there!

Kaitlyn and I arrived in Bangkok, Thailand around 7:30 pm on March 8th. We took a large tourist bus from Siem Reap that took 11.5 hours, which means it was a full day on the road. On our way to Bangkok we met Bert, a fellow backpacker from Utah, who provided us with many insights about traveling! We stayed in a hostel located 100 meters from the BTS sky train, which we used about 3 times. Our first night we went and wandered about to see what was around our hostel.  Our drive in allowed us to see how big Bangkok was and how little we would see in our short time there.  The city was loud and noisy…TukTuk's sounded like little race cars! There were elegant cars, sports cars, street bikes and more. To us, it seemed like another big city as if we were back in the U.S. Our hostel was nice and clean, however, we quickly learned that Bangkok is a big party city and unfortunately so was our hostel. We did not get the best rest due to all the noise. You could hear noise from the street and, because the building was fully cement, we heard everything that happened in the hostel. It honestly wasn’t our favorite city, but we’re still glad we got to experience it!  With that rather captivating intro…let’s talk about what we DID enjoy doing!

On our first full day, Kaitlyn and I (along with our new friend Bert) began a long 5km hike to see the Grand Palace. About 3/4 of the way there, we were stopped by a Thai student at the university who told us the Grand Palace didn't open until 2:30, plus we needed pants to get in (we were all wearing shorts). He pulled out a map and showed us some local places to go see before returning to the Grand Palace. He also told us that the Tuk Tuk's with yellow license plates are subsidized by the government and cheaper than the others. So we jumped on board a tuk tuk and were off to see some of the other sites.  We went and saw a reclining Buddha, a standing Buddha, Thai fashion and then to the Grand Palace. The standing Buddha we saw was unbelievably tall…so tall it once was the tallest in the world, but it was overcome by a Buddha erected in China. The Grand Palace was something quite spectacular. All the temples within were stunning and housed many precious gems, metals and buddhas. It is quite possibly the most beautiful temples we have seen so far! Everything glitters and shines due to the meticulous maintenance of each temple. 

That evening Kaitlyn, Bert and I went found some street food for dinner; we tried the most delicious banana crepes for dessert. Sweetened condensed milk was used as syrup to sweeten it even more. We also had some pretty awesome Pad Thai from a street food vendor. Overall, we did a fair bit of relaxing in Bangkok.

On our third day we went to the Marble Temple, walked to the King’s residence and the Chatuchuk market, where Kaitlyn finally got her coconut. She has wanted to try one since she lived in the USVI, so finally that dream came true, and she drank most of it. Sharing is caring, but so is buying your wife a coconut, so it worked out. ;) 

On the 12th we headed onto our next destination, Ayutthaya. It is a UNESCO Heritage sight with many old temples. We were somewhat “templed out” by this point, so decided to see them all in one day via a scooter (motorbike)! Also, it was the hottest and most humid day we had experienced yet, so it was not pleasant to walk around. So…the scooter was by far one of the most fun things we’ve done.  And it only cost 220 baht for a whole day (6.25USD)! Nicholas loved it, and since Ayutthaya is smaller the traffic wasn’t nearly as crazy. We also had the BEST street food EVER there. Each night we went and tried something new; fish balls (yes we know this sounds weird, but how else do you say balls of fish?), mango with sticky rice, grilled pork on a stick with some kind of sweet/spicy sauce, coconut pancakes, little pork sausages, a big pork sausage (that was the only gross thing we tried) and fried chicken. Our favorite thing was a egg omelet/scramble that had mussels and veggies in it. If you ever go to Thailand, you have to try one! 

From Ayutthaya we took a night train to…Laos! But you have to wait for the next blog post to hear all about that country. ;)

XOXO, friends and family!

N + K

P.S. I forgot to mention our trek back to Bangkok to pick up the over night train tickets we forgot to pick up that we purchased earlier on through an agency. Luckily 1 ticket only cost 15 baht which was about 47 cents.  One thing we continue to learn is truly going with the flow…lucky for us, it was an easily correctable mistake. :)

Here is another video of Ayutthaya, Thailand!