One Night In Bangkok

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I left off of this blog after our first night in Bangkok. Lamphu House is lovely, but three flights of stairs to get to our room is not lovely. I woke up and blogged about our night, then went off in search of breakfast. I found a fruit shake vendor and brought them back up to the room. We packed and got our agenda ready for the day: Hua Lamphong train station to drop off our luggage, Wat Pho for our massage, MBK for some last minute things, then on to our 6:10 night train to Chiang Mai.







Found a taxi on our second try that accepted a meter. Very nice man who didn’t speak any English but offered me gum. Would have liked to keep him to take us to Wat Pho after our stop, but he didn’t know what we were asking. 58 baht for the journey. Dropped off our luggage (300 baht for two pieces) and hailed another taxi to Wat Pho. Boy, definitely peak season here. Wat Pho was not near as busy when we were here last time. The massage prices have raised too. 450 baht for one hour massage! Insane! I subjected myself to another Thai massage, thinking I may have overexaggerated the pain factor. Wrong! Hurt like hell, but I felt great afterwards. Zach got his foot massage too, but it wasn’t as good as the last one he got.







Word of warning: getting a taxi to run its meter from Wat Pho/Grand Palace is impossible. We tried a few times before I said screw it. Found the Tha Tien pier entrance so I came up with a brilliant idea: let’s get on the boat, go up river close to MBK, then hail a taxi. Got to Phra Athip pier and after much hassle, found a taxi. Cost us about 100 baht to get to MBK because the traffic was terrible. We would have been better off negotiating with a taxi to get there. By now it’s been two hours of dicking around on the express boat and taxi, so Zach started to lose faith in my traveling ability. From then on, his common phrase was “Are you sure you know where we are going?”







MBK is as glorious as ever. Huge, busy shopping mall with 7 floors. Jam packed with anything you could possible want. We needed food and ended up on the 5^th floor international food hall. The other food court that uses tickets is much cheaper and I think much better, but we were starved. Spent a lot of money on ok food, then hit the electronics floor. I needed to get internet on my SIM card, so I grabbed the first stall and they hooked me up 3 gigs of internet for a month for 900 baht. Phone works great and I can use all my apps and maps now. Zach bought a wireless mouse since he forgot his at home, and I snagged a coconut cream taco thing (been waiting for a while to eat one of these, they are amazing).







Now I had brilliant idea #2: why hail a taxi when we could use the BTS sky train and MRT subway to go right to the train station? BTS is easy to find within MBK. The maps at the station though are crap. I thought the MRT transfer was at Siam station, so I paid 15 baht a piece for the ride. Got off and couldn’t find the MRT sign. We went to the tourist office and asked. Wrong station (of course). Two more stops later, we got to Sala Dan. I didn’t pay enough to get to Sala Dan so we got stopped at the exit. I had to pay an addition 5 baht a person to actually leave the station. I saw the MRT sign so was feeling confident. By now, Zach is questioning my sense of direction, so I got mad and said “find, let’s just hail a damn taxi.” Went downstairs and no taxis to be found anywhere! Back up the stairs and found the MRT station. Bought our tokens for the ride for 18 baht a person. Went through and the signs showed “Hua Lamphong” straight ahead. So we went straight ahead, put our token in the exit thing, and walked right outside back where we came from. Turned around, paid another 18 baht a person, and Zach finally found we had to go down some more stairs to the subway. We ended up at the train station with 45 minutes to spare. Now, this is known as the “great transportation fiasco that Tasha felt was a brilliant idea but really it sucked and we are never using public transportation again”.







We got on our night train after loading up on snacks (corn, waffles, water, and fruit). The food on the train sucks, so buy your own for cheaper. The berths on the train are in quads. I always book bottom berths so Zach and I aren’t sitting across from each other but across the aisle from one another. Our seat mates were an awesome Aussie couple named Steph and Jordan. We swapped seats for the ride (with me insisting I get my bottom bunk back when it folds into a bed). Jordan and Zach proceeded to get wasted, and I have never laughed so hard in my life. These two are radio personalities in Australia and have travelled all over Asia. The beds turned into bunks and they have little blue curtains. Steph was above me in her berth, and I in mine. Jordan and Zach were standing up in the aisle getting served by Zach’s future wife. She was an older Thai woman who kept bringing beers and cracking them open for the boys. Steph, in her bunk, said one time when the beer maiden came by that Jordan had enough. The woman reached up, closed her curtain, closed my curtain, and said “goooood niiight.” Then, brought more beer. I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.







The next morning was rough for Zach. I warned him… We were stuck on the train an additional 3 hours longer, so we were starved. We all ended up ordering the breakfast, and it was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life. They had microwaved the bread, pineapple, eggs, and used a piece of lunchmeat for ham. Steph kept trying to give hers back, and when that wouldn’t work, tried to pawn it off on others. Jordan was mad and stabbed it a billion times with the fork as a protest.







We finally arrived in Chiang Mai at 11:00. We exchanged our Thai phone numbers with the promise we would meet up when Zach and I return to CM. We headed across the street and down to AYA minibus and caught the 12:00 bus to Pai. And thus begins the next blog called “The Ride From Hell.”

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Comments

[BETTY]

IT WILL ONLY GET BETTER. HAD A GREAT TIME WITH HANNA SAT. NIGHT. SHE IS SO CUTE AND EATS LIKE A PIG. ENJOY YOUR TRIP.