My traveling saga finally continues with photos and comments from Thailand.  This will be another multi-part installment.  Spoiler alert: Thailand is amazing!  Anyone who loves to eat, shop, see gorgeous temples, or lounge on beautiful beaches should put Thailand on their must-see list.

Day 1: Bangkok

So the flight from Paro, Bhutan to Bangkok was probably one of the weirder flights that I have been on.  It was so loud!  And not the plane engines – the people.  It was an evening flight, and I kept nodding off and then jerking myself awake when my head would fall and then snap back up.  I’m sure everyone has either done this or seen their plane seat mate doing this at some point.  But every time that I would wake up, it was like the whole plane was shouting at each other.  And they never turned the lights off in the cabin.  Weird.

We finally touched down in Thailand just before midnight.  I’m pretty sure that taxiing in the airplane and then taking the bus to the terminal might have taken longer than our actual flight.  The airport is a big place with a big name, Suvarnabhumi Airport.  

After waiting interminably long for our baggage, Jenn and I were in the back of a taxi headed to the hotel.  Jenn is amazing at bartering with locals, and got our taxi ride down to half  of the asking price.  Our hotel was ridiculously nice:

We were almost giddy about how nice it was. After the poor door man brought up our 200 lbs of baggage, we pretty much collapsed into bed.

Day 2: The Market

In the morning, we were treated with a sweeping view of the city.  I’ll be honest, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting.  It looks like a very cosmopolitan metropolis with lots of skyscrapers, etc.  

Jenn and I hit the town with the mission of finding food and a massage.  Done and done!  We found a really fancy spa right around the corner.  And while we were killing an hour before our treatment time, we found … Thai food!  It was our first authentic Thai meal including Thai iced tea, food that was way too spicy for us Westerners, and a requisite selfie.

Walking back to the massage place, we were surprised to see triple digit countdowns on the walk signs to cross some of the busy city streets.  Most American cities will have a countdown of maybe 30 seconds, not hundred of seconds.  My massage was amazing!  For a mere $35 US, I had a two hour massage.  Jenn got a traditional Thai massage and paid about $15 for 2 hours.  This is by far the most we would pay for massages the entire trip.  I got a scalp massage as part of my treatment.  I should have known it was going to be a little different since the masseuse asked me like four times if I was sure I wanted one.  It was basically a combo of getting the shit beaten out of my head, someone playing the bongos on my head, and someone karate chopping my head.  It ruined my zen a little bit but I somehow persevered.  

Jenn had read about a weekend market in her travel guide so that was our next stop.  It was awesome!  Seriously, if you find yourself in Bangkok, you MUST check it out.  Tents and vendor carts stretched out as far as you could see.  There were overwhelming scents and crushing crowds.  You could buy home furnishings, paintings, eclectic art and knick knacks, underwear, and soap.  There were whole aisles dedicated to just used Levi’s jeans.  It was totally overwhelming and wonderful.  A torrential downpour started soon after we got there, so we squeezed into a tiny bar to have a spiked fruit punch until things let up a bit.

The clothing that we found there was incredibly cheap and incredibly cute.  Unfortunate Thai women are considerably smaller than me for the most part, but I did find some fun stuff to bring home.

We indulged in some street vendor food.  Ask me in a few days if that was a mistake….

We wandered the market until we ran out of money and it shut down.  Dinner was at a really random but famous restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms.  I’m pretty sure that you can guess what the general theme was…

On the way home from dinner, we just had to stop for a foot massage.  One massage a day just isn’t enough, right?  It was amazing until the woman started giving me a shoulder and neck rub.  That woman basically was abusing my back.  How does someone so small have such strong hands??? She told me that being so tight would cause headaches and difficulty sleeping.  I’m pretty sure that my massage didn’t solve these issues.  But it did certainly add backache to my list of ailments…

To be continued.