Day 3: Arriving in Bangkok
7am - Arrive in Bangkok
Claire: 30 hours after leaving Birmingham and we’ve finally arrived in Bangkok!! The journey was supposed to take 16! On arrival at our hotel we were greeted by a bottle of champagne in our room… the best welcome after such a long journey. A little note next to it reveals it was ordered by my lovely friends Michelle and Adam. Love you guys! Thank you!! We have a room on the 19th floor with views over the city...
11:30 — Time to explore
Bangkok is 36 degrees and SO humid. It’s an absolute attack on the senses… heat, smells, noises! In my usual Claire-style navigation planning, I set out a ‘little walking route’ of the neighbourhood which turned into a 9 hour expedition on foot.
Our first stop was Lumpini Park, a beautiful green space filled with so many runners (who runs in this heat?!) — playgrounds, trees, and a lake... all surrounded by high rise buildings. It feels cooler in the park, away from the car fumes and under the trees.
Jumping on the skytrain we headed for China Town which was fun… watching all the street food vendors and seeing the neons! Then we got a bit lost. Turns out the old city isn’t very well connected in terms of transportation and we couldn’t find even one cafe / bar / restaurant that looked even a tiny bit inviting. They say when you come to Thailand the street food is amazing but everything looks a little dodgy, they definitely don’t have the same food hygiene standards as we do. All the raw meat and fish is just out in the heat… blurgh!
6pm - Starving.
Hungry and tired and sweaty we hid out in McDonalds (shame on us! First McDonalds in FOREVER but we needed wifi and in exchange for some fries we got that!). Eventually we tracked down where all the restaurants were and definitely paid three times over the cost for a tuk tuk (which we only discovered later on) but it was an adventure at least!
We end the night with a cocktail on our hotel rooftop… ahh.
Gav's day takeaway:
- Thai folk love to queue. Much respect to you!
- Bangkok is too hot & crazy. Why would you live there?
- I'm sweaty.
- We ALWAYS wander until we're lost (in our defence, the train station we were looking for had disappeared).
- We had to get McDonalds chips because we were lost and Bangkok doesn't have any restaurants, just loads of dodgy looking street food and fast food.
- We got our first tuk tuk.
- We got ripped off by a tuk tuk.
- Who thought putting everything in shopping centres was a good idea?
- We found all the restaurants (in the shopping centre).
