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Thai Girls
Performing Thai Dance on a competition. Look how trained they are. They must be around 5 years old. Bangkok for both my best friend Grit from Berlin, who visited me for 10 days and for me - was a city of shopping, hurting feet, constant sweating, our hotel pool, daily tailor meetings and temples. It think this sums up our experience the best.
After we had spend 2 days on the beach in Hua Hin south of Bangkok on the East coast, we decided it is about time to head towards Bangkok to empty our money pockets and to experience the famous Asian capital.
Hua Hin was unexpectedly touristy, the city which got famous due to the Thai Kings summer residence. Thus it started to become a popular local holiday area, especially from Bangkok as it is only a 3 hour bus ride away. We enjoyed already here evening markets, local food and the 5km long beach along the coast. However the water was strongly poluted, I could not even see the ground when swimming, which was a shock after Ko Samui and my diving experience. The only things to be seen was plancton and small craps and shells, all living beings, swimming, running, crawling and hopping along my feet when walking into the water. Grit rather
Royal Hotel
The street before and our hotel at night. relaxed on the beach chair with a cold drink, watching passing waves and sun lovers - which I could totally understand after being in the water.
Having arrived in Bangkok after a short and almost comfortable bus journey we checked in in our Royal Hotel 😊 You will not believe how I cherished to have a close friend on my side to share experiences, listen to news from home and to discuss the future. Also the white bed sheets, air con, a varied breakfast buffet and imagine the biggest luxury of all - a pool were very welcome from my side, not only after a long day of shopping, but also after travelling for so long as a backpacker. We managed to strike a good deal over the internet, were we almost paid 2/3 of the total price of the hotel for our room.
Shopping Sprie Men will now shake their heads and women I guess will read more closely when I tell you our (as Grit called it) Power Shopping or Mad Shopping experiences.
In total we have visited 5 markets, 2 shopping malls, every night at least 2 tailors, due to constant alterations to
be done on our clothes and a variety of smaller stalls and street markets. I think just one day we managed not to go shopping, but still had to visit our tailors.
We were flooded with the most diverse and colourful clothing, bags, shoes, cheap to high quality textiles, wedding dresses, wedding gifts, wooden arts & crafts and a lot more, which I will not go into detail now. To sum it up - it was womens heaven as you could find all you need. The only issue was size, well for me it was perfect as the Thai women are not much different to me, but for Grit it was a bigger task to find some clothes fitting to European sizes.
I do not want to brag but I send off Grit this morning with a small suitcase (that I had to buy because of my shopping) and another big bag (that we also had to buy), with almost all of my clothes, wedding preparations or presents for others. As I said, it was a luxury sprie for a few days for me, especially after travelling for so long with a tight budget.
Kings Palace and Grit and Temple
Somehow we ended up to walk around the temples in the hottest part of the day... Wat Pra Kaoe Temple
Now, as a true tourist does, we visited some seights.... walking in the heat of the day to see historical monuments and in the gleaming sun shiny roofs of temples and palaces. Every now and than we had to take a break not only from wonder of the amazing architecture and decorations but also from our overheated bodies.
You can see on the pictures, different parts of the kings palace and the closeby Wat Phra Kaoe Temple. It seemed on the same day that a festival was being prepared as all around the great gardens stalls from different Buddhist temples were present with their offerings and little stalls, hordes of thai children from different schools were running around (showing us a trick with a comic book) and a children thai dance competition was going on. How sweet did those little girls look, with all the decoration and make up on. Amazing!
After some hours of hard core seightseeing we deserve a dip in the pool. Mh, nice and cool.
Grit left on the Sunday morning, after having again a big breakfast from our restaurant buffet and arguments with taxi drivers to use their
Golden Stupa
In the middle of the Grand Palace Temple. Supposedly there is a hair of Buddha buried. meters instead of paying an overpriced trip. If you ever get to Bangkok, definetely use the taxi instead of tuk-tuks because they are cheaper and more comfortable. For the fun a tuk-tuk is nice but you sweat and breath in the fumes, which there is lots of.
Good bye Bangkok until my next time in a few weeks!
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