Bustling Bangkok

11/2/2006-11/4/2006

We left Siem Reap on the morning of the 2nd at 6:30 am on a journey leaving Cambodia and returning us to Bangkok, which had been our initial stop in Southeast Asia. It was important to get an early start because the roads in Cambodia are pretty awful. Our group leader Scott told us that in 2002 his group left at a similar time and ended up getting to the Cambodia-Thailand border at 4:50 pm, just 10 minutes before the border closed. The border town would not be a very fun place to stay the night, so we wanted to do everything possible to prevent that from happening. Fortunately, our trip went perfectly and only required just over 3 hours to get to the border. It was quite a relief, even though are butts may have not felt too relieved after traveling via Toyota Camry on some of the potholed, flooded, and dirty dirt roads I've ever seen. You'd think a developing country like Cambodia would have a better road system, but they might try to inhibit that system in order to force people to use air travel so that they can make more money. Regardless, it was pretty impressive how our Toyota Camrys could handle such rugged terrain. We passed through the border without any problems in an hour or so, and then we had a 4 hour drive to Bangkok on wonderful, flat roads. We arrived in the afternoon, and had ample time to explore some of the city that evening.

Bangkok is an incredibly huge city with a population of over 6 million people. The first evening we were there I just wandered around the area near our guest house, which only covers a small area of the city. We were staying near Khao San road, which I guess is the backpacker mecca of the city. That road has tons of shops and food stands. I had some wonderful pad Thai for about 50 cents. However, the rest of the street was full of touristy shops of which I have seen more than enough. It was amazing how many westerners are here. It definitely did not feel like I was in Asia.

The next day most of the group went on an excursion throughout the city. We became acquainted with 2 modes of public transportation in Bangkok, the riverboat and the sky train. A large river runs in the north-south direction of the city, and we used it to get from our guest house area to a place where we could pick of the sky train. Here is a picture of a bridge on the river.

We then took the sky train to a part of Bangkok called Siam, which has various shopping centers that make most American shopping malls look outdated. Here are a few pictures of one shopping center.

They even have Outback Steakhouse here (see above). Where am I again? Another picture that I thought was funny is the following one of a building I saw while walking around the downtown area.

The last thing we did on our excursion was go to the Golden Mount, which is a temple on the top of a hill. There were some great views of the Bangkok skyline. Here is one of those views.

Since we would be on a van all night on November 4th (Rebecca's birthday), we wanted to celebrate the night before on the 3rd. That evening we went to a place called the Vertigo Bar on the 61st floor of this incredible hotel. I saw a sign describing it as "the tallest open-roof hotel restaurant in the world." Although the taxi ride took over an hour causing us to miss the sun actually setting, we still had some awesome views and a great time. Here are some pictures.

The last day in Bangkok was fairly uneventful. In the morning I decided to try out the public transportation by myself and go to Chinatown, which I had read was an interesting place. I made it there without any problems, but it was hard to find the main Chinatown street for me because there weren't really any road signs. I found what I though might have been the main street, but even that wasn't too interesting. Maybe it was because it was a Saturday morning. After lunch I went with some other members of our group to the supermarket to buy some food for our 5 day stay at a beach in southern Thailand. I picked up some breakfast and lunch stuff, and the supermarket traffic jams got pretty crazy while we were there. After packing up my stuff in the evening, I headed out with the group to the bus station for our all night bus ride down to Railay Beach in southern Thailand. I had some pad Thai for dinner, but I'm convinced a better option would have been the KFC a block away from the station.