One Night in Bangkok...

...and your lungs burn, your wallet's empty, and your ego is bruised. :( Our problems first began while we were still in the LA airport, being denied boarding passes for our flight to Thailand. Apparently there's been a long-standing, not very well publicized rule (that until now has been rarely enforced), requiring tourists entering Thailand to have proof of a departing ticket within 30 days. We had planned on leaving within 30 days over land to Laos, so we had no official ticket to show, and thus could not board our flight. Luckily we had arrived 3 hours early at the airport, so we bought the wireless internet and jumped online to try to find some sort of ticket to take us out of Thailand that wouldn't empty our bank account. Thanks to AirAsia.com, we now have $100 one-way tickets to Kuala Lumpur on February 13th, and were able to get on our flight at the last minute. I hope Malaysia is nice!

After a very long flight to Bangkok that included layovers in Taipei and Hong Kong, we finally arrived and made our way by taxi to the B&B, which was located ~1 hour away from the tourist areas in a local neighborhood. We spent the evening perusing the "Fresh Market" - rows of sidewalk stands selling food items that we never found anywhere near the tourist sections of town - pretty much any kind of guts and raw animal you could imagine. The stench was foul! We also ran into many older white men strolling around with their young Thai "girlfriends", which was quite a sight to see.

The following day we took the MRT (underground subway) to the Chatuchak Weekend Market (see pic), which with 5000+ stalls on over 35 acres, is by far the largest market in Thailand. Here you can find almost anything at rock-bottom prices, but we only picked up a couple small gifts since we're traveling light. Afterwards we set out on a journey to find Chomlong Mangsawirat, a local vegetarian buffet run by the Vegetarian Society. After an hour of searching through backroads and getting soaked by the pouring rain, we finally were pointed in the right direction and had a fantastic plate of food for 15 baht (~50 cents). We also met a local vegetarian shopkeeper who gave us a lot of good tips (this was before we got jaded about talking to the locals, heh). Afterward, we took the Skytrain (BTS) over to Siam, the major upscale shopping district of Bangkok, but didn't stay long.

The next morning we got on the un-airconditioned local bus (see pic) for the 1-hour trip to the main tourist area to see the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (traffic in Bangkok is horrible, and they definitely have the smog to show for it). Honestly, we didn't find either very impressive - I guess gold flake and disco mirrors just aren't our style (see pics) - so afterward we negotiated with a taxi driver to take us down to Khao San Road, the main "gringo" area. After traveling about 100 feet, the tuk tuk driver informed us that instead of taking us to our destination, we would be stopping to shop for some "Thai fashion" (this is an extremely common scam - the drivers get commissions from the shops). We offered to up our price if he would just take us to our destination, but he adamantly refused, so we busted out of the tuk tuk and ran. :)


We walked to Khao San Road (see pic), which, sure enough, was full of white people and more Thais aggressively trying to sell things and scam us. We got some vegetarian food (much easier to find here than in the rest of the city), then took the very crowded Chao Phraya Express boat (see pic) down the river to the State Tower, where we had drinks overlooking the smog, I mean city, from the dome on top (see pic).


The next day was the worst of our entire trip so far, and has really jaded us on Bangkok. While exiting the MRT station on our way to the Forensic Science Museum, a well-dressed Thai man helped us cross the street (the cars and numerous scooters here don't bother stopping for anyone or anything) and then began chatting with us, saying he was in town for a teachers conference and was just strolling around town before his train that evening. He asked if we'd like to walk with him for a few minutes since we were going the same way and he could point out some landmarks. We were like "alright, whatever"... and before we knew it, he had ushered us into a cab heading to another part of the city. We arrived at a temple with a giant sitting Buddha inside, with very few tourists, which was pretty neat (see pic), so we thought maybe the guy was genuinely trying to be kind (we now know that "self-serving" rather than "kind" is the prevailing trait of Bangkokians). He paid for the cab himself, and said he would take us on a short cruise down the canals of old Bangkok, so we stupidly agreed to go. And 2 hours later when he had us trapped on the boat and robbed us of all our money, we decided we were really really done with Bangkok. So here's a piece of advice for anyone planning a visit: People in Bangkok who speak any amount of English are out to screw you over. Don't talk to ANYONE.

We spent the last couple of days in the city yelling at anyone who approached us to "Go F Themselves" (is this really the kind of person that Bangkok has driven us to be???), finally made it to the Forensic Science Museum to see the bodies of accident victims (pretty interesting, actually), and viewed the Marble Temple. We've eaten bad pizza for most meals since vegetarian food is extremely difficult to find here, and can't wait for our flight up to Chiang Mai in the mountains of Northern Thailand, which is supposed to be a much nicer place than nasty mean Bangkok. (see pic of view from our B&B)