Bangkok, Thailand

คำทักทายจากประเทศไทย (

Greetings from Thailand, via google translate). I left the US a week ago and have been on a whirl wind since. I had been planning on traveling abroad since graduating with my masters this past spring and have been waiting to see where I would end up.Thailand was the final choice. The decision was made due to my never being there before, the low cost of living, and Brentwood (my travel partner) has been there several times before and said it would be easy to get around (compared to our second choice of South America).

SO after 36 hours of travel I arrived in Bangkok at 1 in the morning on the 9th. We stayed at a hotel near the airport and I quickly adjusted to the Thai life of always being hot. The next day we took a taxi into Bangkok city center and checked in to our new hotel,

Cacha Hotel

(one of our favorite hotels thus far). We walked around the streets near our hotel and got on the above-ground train to the river where we then got on a boat tour down the Chao Phraya River. Then we walked by the Grand Palace and I had my first Thai meal (pad thai) at the navy club restaurant. I was drawn to a nearby temple (Wat Pho) and found out that it housed a 150 ft reclining Buddha covered in gold leaf so I had to check it out, and it was awesome. Around the temple we saw Buddhist monks and ornate decorations. After sweating miserably we made our way back to the hotel. We stumbled upon a Thai Massage shop while walking around our hotel and decided to go ahead and get one. Brentwood is a big fan of Thai massages and gets one often due to the cheap cost (~200 Baht for 1hr.=~$5.50). It was definitely different than the "Western" style massages I have gotten. Thai massages are pretty intimate; they get all up in your grill. When you lay on your stomach they even stand on you. I enjoyed it after I got over my awkwardness, and I plan on getting many more. Later we went out for dinner at The Rooftop Restaurant on top of Siam@Siam Hotel. We had views of the National Stadium and were treated to some fireworks in the distance. I had a great meal and had my first Thai beer- Chang.

One of the boats on the Chao Phraya River

Wat Pho

Reclining Buddha covered in gold leaf

Good to know

Wat Pho

Brentwood near our hotel

View of Bangkok from The Rooftop Restaurant

10th

-The next day we checked out of our hotel and moved closer to Chinatown to stay at

River View Guest House

. After picking up some essentials I took a nap up until dinner time. We went up to the hotel's roof for dinner that night and it was one of my favorite spots so far. [We use agoda.com to book our hotels and most of the places we've stayed have been ~$30. There are definitely cheaper and more expensive places out there but we've been pleased with all of our accommodations thus far. The rooms have everything that you would find in an American hotel room].

View from our hotel room @ River View Guest House

Brentwood @ River View Guest House

11th-

After waking up early we searched for breakfast in Chinatown and became distracted by their markets.

It was also a special day for Thailand; they were celebrating the King's birthday with a "Bike for Dad" event where thousands of people bike 30km. We took the metro to a fancy mall and watched the bike event along the streets. I'm pretty sure the King passed us in a motorcade because people were stopped on the streets and I was told I couldn't take any pictures. There were so many bikers and it took us awhile to get anywhere. Here's a

youtube video

I took of the event.

We headed to the train station, got an hour-long foot massage, and got on an overnight bus headed South on our trip to the island of Koh Phangan. But more on that on the next post.