Blogs from Thailand, Asia - page 2661

Last day in our lovely floatel - dont really want to leave it, its so nice! got picked up by a boat, and AManda split her tousers!!! hahhahahahah, typical manda! Floated to the place where we were meant to go elephant riding, but Amanda chickened out, for many reasons - fear of life, rabies, and sunstroke - it was mega hot (agaian!) Chris went on though, and got a sun burn really bad. It was about an hour and it ended with the elephants dunking themselves into the river which was refreshing. Lots of amusing sights and sounds out of the rear of the elephant!!! Then went back on the little boat to get on a bamboo raft to go rafting back to the kitti raft base. Got on and it didnt sink - so cool ... read more

I was in Bangkok for only two nights and wasn't able to do much sightseeing because (1) it was the start of Thai New Year and many temples and sites were closed; and (2) I had to run some errands and prepare for the next month, since I stupidly didn't prepare for anything while back in Seoul except book a flight to Bangkok and buy a copy of Lonely Planet's Southeast Asia on a Shoestring. The first day, I was not impressed with the city, but that didn't have anything to do with the actual city itself... I was totally overwhelmed, tired, scared and confused as it was the first time I had ever traveled alone and it was the first time I was in an "unwesternized" place (Tijuana with my family doesn't count I guess). ... read more

Two days ago, my journey began with a bus from Kuala Lumpur to Butterworth and then onto a train right up to Krung Thep (Bangkok!)-the city of Angels. The train ride, even though extremely long, was something worthwhile to write about. As much as I slept through the journey most of the time, I also had a good time interacting with a kid whose dad's a Malaysian while his mum's a Thai, and also with Suk, the Thai Indian lady sitting opposite me. Indeed as a virgin backpacker, I had a lot of questions about Thailand or even trivial matters like does this train really goes to Bangkok? I had some bad experiences before, like the last time when I was on a trip to Singapore. I bought a direct ticket to Singapore but the bus ... read more

That's right folks, it's yet another new year. Today Thailand celebrates it's new year which is a raucous good time. Though we didn't get to partake fully in the festivities, we can tell that they do it right. As part of the celebration, they have huge water fights throughout town. People drive around in trucks, cars, scooters, scooters with sidecars, etc. and douse each other with water from huge trash cans inside of whatever vehicle they are using. For the most part it's all in good fun and it's actually quite nice seeing as how it's so damn hot out there. We got pretty wet today for a lot of reasons, Songkran being only one of them. We have completed day 3 of 4 in our PADI open water diver certification, which is pretty cool, but ... read more

After our overnight in Zhongdian, we backtracked through the Yunnan Province spending one night in Lijiang, one night in Dali and one night in Kunming (Jill's favority Asian city). Our flight departed from Kunming and arrived in Bangkok a couple hours later; we were to meet the in-laws who are spending the better of two weeks through a quick tour of Thailand. Later that afternoon Jill's brother Mike and his girlfriend Lauren would arrive. And late in the evening, the parental in-laws would arrive. So we were first to arrive and we took the taxi from the airport to the Peninsula - that is not a rinky dinky guesthouse, that is a 5-star hotel. With our big backpacks, nappy hair and my beard, we checked into our luxury room. We proceeded to our luxury room and ... read more