Thailand Part 1
I took an amazing trip to Thailand with my boyfriend, J, a good friend, S, and her significant other, Jo. You may be wondering how this came about in the first place. At least that’s the question I get all the time. Who thinks to take a vacation on the other side of the world in Thailand of all places? Thailand is actually a popular tourist destination but maybe moreso in other parts of the world that are closer to Asia like Africa and Australia. But for an American, it’s a long and arduous process to get there: a 24 hour trip by airplane! I had never traveled so far in my life.
Well my boyfriend, J, happens to have lived in Thailand. He worked over there doing business for about 5 years after college and has not been back since he left about 3 years ago. He recently graduated from a professional program and decided to take the opportunity before he got tied to a job to travel over. Of course, he planted the idea in my head and I was ready to go. Even after he decided we should go someplace closer instead, I had already gotten my hopes up about Thailand and I insisted we go.
How did my S and her boyfriend, Jo, come in the picture? S happens to love to travel as much as I do so when I told her about our plans for Thailand her immediate response was, “I want to come”. Well a big part of the reason was that Jo had always wanted to go to Thailand. Somewhere in life he had developed a fascination with Thailand and a love of the food. So we decided to invite them along.
So Sept 13th, we headed off across the globe on a 24 hour trip by plane. I survived the flight but I was not prepared for the jet lag that ensued. I mean I was literally falling asleep by 5pm everyday and waking up full of energy at 3am. It drove me nuts!
But otherwise my trip was beyond awesome. We spent our first two nights in Bangkok at a popular area calls Khao San Road. There are few words to describe the chaos, craziness and livelihood that is Khao San Road. When we arrived there after 11pm the street was crowded, vendors of all types selling goods, the smell of street food being cooked, seared, stir fried right here on the street. There were young couples laughing and walking through the street. Lights, sounds and energy. And this went on all through the night.
When I awoke at 4 am unable to fall back asleep, J graciously offered to take me out into the street to get food. Maybe the jetlag had woken him up too so he wasn’t too annoyed with my tossing and turning… YET. (more to come on that later). The craziness from the night was still going on full force as we walked through the street and stopped at a vendor selling fresh fruit juice that she was extracting right here on street from an array of local fruits, some with which I was familiar and some with which I was not. I declined as I was more hungry than thirsty and we ended up at Burger King. OK before you have a cow, in our defense, we wanted traditional breakfast food, not the pad thai and chicken skewers that were being sold on the street. It felt a little too early for that.
I should mention that one of my favorite street foods while I was there was banana crepes. Unfortunately there was none to be found that morning. But a banana crepe was the first food I had in Thailand after we reached our destination on Khao San Road the night we arrived. They were made from the batter right there in front of us, spread with Nutella and layered with freshly peeled bananas and then folded into a crepe for all of 40 bahts (that would be less than $1.50). But I digress…
After breakfast, J and I took a romantic stroll away from the now dying-down craziness on Khao San as the moon was disappearing and the sun was starting to peek it’s head up over the horizon. We walked down another street that had actual restaurants and looked almost Parisian, a far cry from the chaos on Khao San. We would later have breakfast there our last morning in Bangkok before heading to Phuket.
That day, we did J’s least favorite thing to do in Thailand: visit temples. S and Jo insisted on seeing all the temples, which isn’t exactly my cup of tea either. I’m more of an adventure and nature kind of gal myself but it was an OK experience. I felt bad for poor J who ended up playing tour guide, orchestrating the taxi commute, and everything else. But something tells me he kind of enjoyed it too. All the taxi drivers and other local Thais we ran into were so impressed and in awe of how well he spoke Thai and his familiarity with the local culture and “lingo”.
Of course by 5pm I started to get very very sleepy and almost irritable. That jetlag would stay with me through the trip and the first few days of my time back in the US unfortunately. But my first day in Thailand went off without a hitch. On to day 2.
Thailand Part 2
The morning of our second day, I was able to sleep a bit later. We met up with S and Jo and decided at my suggestion that we find a place to have breakfast on the street I had mentioned earlier that had an almost Parisian feel. We easily found a restaurant with outdoor seating and sat down for breakfast. I had traditional eggs and toast. (Don’t crucify me, I would eventually delve into traditional Thai cuisine just not right now).
We planned out our day: a trip to yet another temple and then catch our flight in the afternoon to Phuket. J and I tolerated the temple visits and even took some pictures. We got back early enough that I decided to walk around Khao San Road and do some shopping. I have to admit I’m not good with shopping. I am extremely indecisive and have difficulty making good decisions on the spot. For me, "buyer’s remorse" is the usual result of spontaneous shopping and knowing that, I tend to avoid it. Also I was having trouble with the local currency and knowing how much is too much to pay for something when you’re under pressure. Plus, bargaining is a must when shopping in places like this. They always give you an inflated price with the expectation that you will bargain them down. I am always fearful of not bargaining enough and paying too much or going too low with my offer and insulting the seller or just looking stupid. I may have been overthinking it a bit.
Anyway, I managed to buy a tee shirt with the logo of a local beer and also a bathing suit. Naturally the bathing suit did not fit as I hadn’t been able to try it on and buyer’s remorse ensued. I quickly got over it with the excitement of our trip to Phuket.
It was an ordeal packing up all our stuff again, checking out and lugging our luggage down the bumpy crowded road to catch a taxi to take us to the airport. Our flight was mostly uneventful however and we arrived in Phuket on time. After a long drive to our hotel, we checked in, were led to our rooms and I was happy to find that it was everything that I wanted. We opened our curtains to a beautiful view of the pool and the ocean. Sitting on the our patio we could hear the constant sound of the waves crashing on the ocean and it instantly relaxed my frazzled mind. Of course I had to jump on the bed…(I’m still a kid at heart) and reveled in how soft and cushiony the bed was. We would take many unintentional late afternoon naps on this bed… and by naps I mean 3-4 hours of heavenly slumber only to wake up in a panic because we were supposed to meet S and Jo for dinner or get ready to go out someplace. Oh well, blame it on the jetlag.
Anyway, this evening was the first of those naps. We woke up 4 hours later at 10pm (we were supposed to meet up for lunch to 8pm). So J and I ended up going to one of the hotel restaurants and made it there just in the nick of time before they closed the kitchen. We sat out and enjoyed the night breeze. I ate a quesadilla (Hey, don’t judge, I was too hungry to experiment with unfamiliar food). We went back up to the room, sat out on our balcony listening to the sounds of the ocean and eventually went back to bed. And so ends my second day in Thailand.
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