Blogs from Bangkok, Central Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 720

We flew into Bangkok this morning! We spent most of the day at the tailor having suits made! This is a very big and crazy city! I think the popullation is about 7 million. We don't even know where to begin! We are staying in a very touristy area so we hope we will be able to find our way around! We took a rive taxi today because there is so much traffic! Anyway, we are just here for the weekend and then we fly home! ... read more

I know it's only a few days since the last blog posting, but we got some good pictures that I thought I would share. We went to Dream World on Saturday and Max had a great time. It was his first amusement park experience. It was not really like Disney World - I would say it was more like a lower end Asian version of Great America, but it still had a lot of stuff for Max to do. One thing you have to get used to here is that the safety standards are definitely not those of the U.S. For example, there were a number of rides for small children to get on by themselves that did not have seat belts and I just couldn't bring myself to let Max go on those, although there ... read more

Yesterday I had a brief walking tour of Bangkok that was helpful in getting to know the city better and gave me a small inkling of the wonderful shopping possibilities this city has to offer, which is enhanced by talking to people who have already lived here for at least six months. For example, we went into a shopping mall called "Sogo" with the most non-descript looking shoe store that you most likely wouldn't just walk into. It turns out that this shop will remake any pair of shoes you may have identically with high quality leather in whatever color you want. It's not dirt cheap ($40-$50), but if you have any really nice pairs of shoes, it is worth it to have another pair made there. There is also a fabulous outdoor market on Soi ... read more

We went with a tour group consisting of 22 people in total. And everywhere we went, we were joined by hundreds of other tourists at every single place. Business locals heckled us everywhere. Shopping was an exhausting chore because we were constantly being told what to buy and at what price to buy. Motorbike-taxi drivers would get in our faces and ask us where we'd like to go and saying 'no' twice is not enough to turn them down. I sat with a Dutch guy at a breakfast buffet by accident one morning and what would be an awkward time turned into a heated discussion about how much we hated going out into the streets. Though Bangkok is internationally known as a beautiful city, I'm going to beg to differ. It might have been 20 or ... read more

Bonjour. Je suis de retour a Bangkok. Je reviens juste de Siem Reap au Cambodge. Ca a ete un grand depaysement au debut. Siem Reap est une petite ville par endroits et un village en meme temps, avec des routes qui se changent en chemin de terre, ornieres. trous etc... Tout le monde semble conduire comme s'ils etaient seuls sur la route et on se demande s'ils conduisent a droite ou a gauche vu qu'il n'y a pas l'air d'y avoir de sens ..... Des velos et des motos partout. Quant a traverser une rue, c'est impossible car ils ne s'arretent jamais. C'est un peu un jeu de roulette et c'est plus sur de rester sur le meme trottoir...Nous sommes restes dans un hotel assez confortable. Il ya la clim partout et les temperatures sont raisonnables. ... read more