I arrived in Bangkok on the 24th of May. It ended up being quite a long journey. I left for the airport in Okinawa early in the morning and when I arrived at the terminal, I realized that I had forgotten to return the room keys for the hostel…doh! So once I checked in I had to run around trying to find a way to mail the keys to the hostel. Fortunately I found some very helpful people and when I called the hostel to tell them I forgot to return the key they were super cool about it…and apologized to me…love the Japanese people. I deserved one last pudding after that…it was decent for a 7 eleven pudding. I then boarded a flight for Taipei where I had a 4.5 hour layover so I did some duty-free shopping! The time actually went by very fast…Taipei airport is really quite nice. I arrived in Bangkok around 6:30 PM, figured out how to get some cash and decided to follow instructions for public transportation. This involved taking a public bus to the nearest skytrain station (which was surprisingly quite far…at least 30 minutes), taking the skytrain to another station to switch trains and then walking to the hostel…and it was hot! I got to the hostel at 9pm. I did pass a cool temple along the way and a few other interesting sights. The hostel was recommended by a travel buddy and I learned that we very different tastes in hostels. Lub D. hostel is nice and clean but it is a party hostel and they play way too much Justin Bieber. I dropped off my luggage and went in search of food. I found the street market recommended by the hostel and picked a place to eat. I ordered pad kee maw and after the first bite all was right with the world. It tasted similar to the pad kee maw at home but so much better. I did a happy dance with the thai basil, lemongrass, mushrooms and noodles. To top it off the meal plus a beer were about $2. Amazing! I ended the night on a high and went to bed.

The next morning I walked down the street from the hostel for a yummy passion fruit and mango smoothie! I goal for the day was research on what I wanted to do in Bangkok and shopping. I was making poor progress with research when I was invited to lunch by a dorm mate. I joined her and a brother and sister and we ended up at the same place where I ate dinner the night before. This time I tried Paneng curry…it was pretty good but not as good as the noodles. After lunch we all decided to go shopping. On the way to shopping I bought a thai dress that was way too large but I got a good deal so whatever. Now I needed a belt to manage the tent like appearance of the dress. We first explored a street market nearby but everything seemed to be closing so we took the train to MBK, a giant mall nearby. On the way I had some taro milk with tapioca pearls…yummmmm. MBK is gigantic! It’s got pretty much everything you could ever want. One person in the group got a haircut, another got a wax, I bought a belt and souvenirs and we all ate at the market outside. I had a green mango salad…very spicy, citrusy and refreshing. Others got pad thai and we finished with mango and sticky rice…so delicious! After satiating our shopping desires we headed back to the hostel in a tuk tuk…we managed to fit 5 adults into the back of the tuk tuk…it was quite a ride. I think the driver hated us…

I accepted that I was at a party hostel and gave in to the party lifestyle. I hadn’t done much of that so far on this journey. So we decided to go out on the town and I wore my thai tent dress with my new belt. It was the same group from the morning with one addition from California. We started by walking over to an area that just said ‘Boys’. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect…it was an alley with a bunch of male strip clubs. We decided not to go inside…the boys trying to lure us in looked very young. No one was feeling it…especially the random straight guy. So we decided to fit 6 adults into a tuk tuk to go to Khosan street. It was ridiculous, we were all being very loud and obnoxious. At some point I became very aware of how we were acting and felt really bad for the driver…he definitely hated us. I hated us a little bit too. Khosan street is basically where drunk tourists go to get more drunk and high and potentially laid. You may remember it from such movies as ‘The Beach’. As soon as we walked on to the street someone stuck a piece of paper in my face that said blowjob. Can a woman get a blowjob? So not my scene but the group seemed to be enjoying themselves and I didn’t want to spend the night being a fuddy duddy so I went with the flow. Other things we were offered on khosan street:
– Fried insects (tarantulas, cockroaches, worms, scorpions etc.)
– Laughing gas
– Buckets of alcohol
– Beer towers
– Goofy hats
– Disney balloons
– Lots of sex with boys, girls and lady boys
All of us accepted the offer of the bucket of alcohol. Some of us accepted the offer of Laughing gas. Sadly no one accepted the offer of goofy hats. After one bucket, we were ready to dance so we danced. It’s really unfortunate but the Bangkokians are really into Justin Bieber :-(. Still we danced. The bars shut down at 2. We lost three people and somehow I got left behind with the two that wanted to stay out (one was 10 years older and one was 10 years younger and both were wasted) even though everything was shutting down and the prostitutes were roaming the streets for last call. They were listening to some random people sitting on the street corner playing various ‘instruments’ while one girl sang/ yelled random pop songs. They were not good…terrible in fact. I have a video but it’s terrible so I’ll spare you. Eventually, I was able to convince them it was time to go. We were feeling happy enough to sing songs terribly on the ride back. The driver ignored us until the end when he started laughing at us. When we arrived at the hostel we decided that we wanted ice cream…so we headed to the 7eleven. Like in Japan, 7elevens are an important part of the culture here :-). It’s where you buy food and drinks and ice cream. We made out purchases and sang our way back to the hostel. It was a ridiculous but fun night…especially since I got ‘hit on’ by a gay guy and a lesbian. That’s how it is in Thailand man.

I did not feel the same the next morning as I was hungover and I was the one that drank the least. I think it was the cheap alcohol in the bucket. Anyway, this was the day that Lil’Sun was arriving! And we were staying in a nice hotel!! I had booked a Sheraton that night and they allowed me to check in early. It was a pretty nice place with views of the river and all the river boats. They even had a free river boat shuttle that would take you up and down the river. I hopped on one to go get lunch and to find a jasmine garland for Lil’Sun. It was a nice ride…romantical even. Lunch was adequate, garland smelled so good! I’ve learned that finding good street food in Bangkok is not that easy. I headed back to the hotel with the goal of getting a Thai massage. I found a place around the corner from the hotel and got my very first thai massage for $7. They had a little cubby area with a mat on the floor where they do the massage. You get some baggy clothes to change into. The pants are draw string but there was no string to tie them with. It’s okay I made it work. The massage involved a lot of elbows and popping of things. The masseuse used her whole body for the massage. It was a pretty good massage for $7. At dinner time I decided to go to the hotel restaurant because they had a cultural performance. I was originally thinking I would just have a drink but once I sat down at a table I realized I didn’t want to go hunt down a street market that would have good food. So I settled in for the show with my lychee martini and green curry. The first 2 dances were kinda eh but the last one was really cute. It told the story of Hanuman and a mermaid, Suvannamaccha. There’s definitely a lot of Hindu influence in Thailand. Dinner was pretty decent too.

Street art

View near hotel

View from hotel

Turtles in the river

River boat

Me on the river boat

Thai chilles!

Cultural performance

Cultural performance

Cultural performance

All that was left to do was wait for Lil’ Sun to arrive. Her flight landed around midnight so I knew it would be a while before she arrived so I went sleepy time. She arrived around 1:30am and it was a joyful reunion. We had some wine, took selfies for the girls, ate some red bean kit kat and went to bed for a few hours before we caught our flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Oh and Lil’ Sun bought me a new backpack (the one I bought in Argentina was garbage and already falling apart) and walking shoes! So happy!

On to Cambodia!!