Taxis in Thailand are a pain. They frequently try to rip people off, especially tourists, by refusing to use the meter. On the way to our hotel the first night we got scammed. We were so focused on finding the place, since we never printed out the name and directions in Thai, that we didn't insist on a meter. We got charged more than double what we should have. It still only cost about $7 because Thailand is really cheap but it sucks knowing you got ripped off. I've heard the tuk tuks are even worse but we never took one. The rest of the trip we only took taxis that agreed to use the meter. One nice thing about Shanghai is all the legal taxis have to use a meter. There is even an English number listed inside every taxi that you can call to complain if they try to scam you. Most other cities in China aren't as good about that. Shanghai cracked down on it a few years ago for the world expo so it is pretty convenient to get around.
Our hotel the first two nights in Bangkok was unimpressive. We were in a fourth floor walk up but it was comfortable and only a 15 minute walk to Khaosan Road. The first night after we arrived we went to Khaosan Road for dinner. Khaosan Road is pretty much backpacker heaven. I never saw a place quite so overrun with white people wearing dreads. There were whole stores dedicated to Bob Marley. I was sort of sad there weren't any souvenirs there I really liked enough to want to bring home. I still liked that Khaosan Road had losts of restaurants and bars where you could get Thai food for two dollars and drinks for about the same price. There also were little booths everywhere selling bags of mango, pineapple, strawberry and other fruits for about $0.50 and fruit smoothies for $1. We pretty much just went around eating fruit for 4 and a half days. I love Thai food, it is so much better than Chinese food. I think almost every western person who has traveled around Asia thinks Thailand has the best food.
Our first full day in Thailand we toured around Bangkok. All the most important temples are very close together in the old city area called Rattanakosin. I thought we'd run out of time but we managed to see the top four sights in one day. First we went to this ridiculously ornate temple called Wat Arun. I think it it way prettier than the temples in China. Thailand follows a type of Buddhism more similar to India and the temples are way more elaborate to appease the many Indian gods.
After Wat Arun we took a ferry across Chao Phraya river to Wat Pho, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. I wasn't terribly impressed with the temple, it wasn't as ornate and the building around the Buddah was small compared to the giant golden Buddah which made it hard to get a good view of it.
Then we checked out the Grand Palace and Wat Prakeaw, Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Everything was very ornate and covered in gold and jewels. The Emerald Buddha was really cool but you weren't allowed to take photos inside the building.Thailand has some serious worship of their royal family so the palace was pretty crazy. There was a textile museum just housing clothes their queen had once worn. None of her clothing was terribly exciting though.We toured around and checked out all the buildings.
I don't know much about the royal family in Thailand but they are really into their king there. Every few blocks you find life sized photos of the king like this one. I'm not sure if people in Thailand actually like the king or just say they do to avoid prison.
It only took us a few hours to see all the temples and since we still had a bit of time afterwards we headed over to the National Museum. Its collection was somewhat unimpressive. There were some puppets, a few ornate crowns and palanquins the kings and queens paraded around in. It wasn't terribly exciting though. I wouldn't highly recommend it unless you have a lot of time in Bangkok.
In the evening we saw a drag show called Calypso Caberet at a shopping mall called Asiatique. Bangkok is known for having a lot of very convincing drag queens and a lot of prostitution. It was pretty much a typical vaudeville style dance show that featured one performance from every major country in Asia. The performers were only ok but some of the drag queens were so convincing I had to double check online afterwards that there weren't women in the show. The really annoying thing was the show was far out and it was hard to find a taxi willing to take us there. We tried to take a ferry but ended up missing the last one because the signs were terrible and we couldn't find it. On the way there our taxi driver offered to take of to a different kind of drag show that wasn't PG rated like the one we saw.
The next day we caught a bus to Koh Chang. If you walk along Khaosan Road the are a bunch of travel agency booths selling bus tickets. We randomly found an Israeli travel agency which I was surprised by because I didn't know there was much of a Jewish presence in Thailand. I also found a Israeli restaurant named Shoshana just off of Khaosan Road. We ended up booking our bus ticket through the Israeli travel agency.
Koh Chang is a island about a 5 hour bus ride from Bangkok. Once you get off the bus you need to take a ferry across to the island. Then you can take a taxi to the hotel. The taxis are all rickety open air trucks that squeeze in as many people as possible, some people standing and hanging off the step on the back.
I was hoping Koh Chang would have pretty resorts similar to where we spent our honeymoon but it isn't quite that developed. Things there are a bit more rustic but it does have pretty beaches and very clear water.
If you are looking for a fancy resort it is the wrong place to go though. We paid about $100 a night to stay at a somewhat fancy resort where everything wasn't quite as nice as I'd have hoped. Our room was kind our weird. They overbooked the room we requested so they "upgraded us" to a family cabin. It was kind of weird because the bathroom was outside with no roof and unfinished concrete floors so it was sort of like using an outhouse rather than a bathroom in a $100 a night resort. And in Thailand $100 US dollars means a lot more, a meal in a restaurant that would cost $20 in the US costs $1.50 in Thailand. The bedroom had a mosquito net but somehow in the morning even though we used it Danny woke up covered in bites. We also kept seeing geckos crawling around the room. We had a little jacuzzi in our cabin too. It would have been fun to use but it was dirty and covered with leaves. We asked them to send someone to clean it but they only half way skimmed leaves of the to and left a ton of leaves crud in the drain so we never used it.
Also, Christmas is one of the busiest times so everything we wanted to do kept being booked out. We wanted to do a day trip where you ride and elephant but it was sold out. We had to settle for watching other people do it who booked in advance. We also tried to rent a motorbike from the hotel so we could go exploring but they were all booked out. The hotel offered a big Christmas dinner gala at about 12 times the price of a normal meal. We decided to skip it and avoid Christmas stuff as much as possible.
We pretty much just hung out at the beach and relaxed. The best part was renting a canoe and rowing out to a nearby small island.
I decided that since our hotel in Koh Chang was somewhat disappointing we should get a really fancy hotel in Bangkok for the last night in Bangkok so we booked a swanky looking room in the downtown area of Bangkok. Our hotel was a few blocks from a street called Soi Cowboy, the street with all the strip clubs.
For our last day in Bangkok we took a ferry ride back to Khaosan Road because we had to pick up our deposit from our first hotel. The ferry ride was really pretty and had a beautiful view of Wat Arun.
The hotel from the first night was across from another temple so we checked it out for a minute while we were there. The temple was built by a Chinese community in Bangkok and with prompting from Thai locals the Chinese named it a Thai word that meant pig slop. They later changed the name to Wat Sittaram. It was a pretty little temple.
Overall we enjoyed seeing Thailand. If I go back ever I'd really like to check out Koh Samui or Phuket, islands farther south that are supposed to be much nicer than Koh Chang. We would have gone this trip but we didn't have enough time to make it out there. I also walk to check out the area around Chiang Mai, the jungle like are in northern Thailand. I also really want to go to Cambodia and see Ankor Wat next time we're in South East Asia. It seems like every time we go somewhere new I add more places to the list of places I want to see. We always seem to have two more trips planned. Next week Danny is going to LA for a conference. In two weeks I'm heading to Harbin to see an Ice Festival. I might freeze... Next month for Chinese New Year we are heading to India. In May we are planning to go to Lijiang when Danny has another conference there. I think we are starting to be fairly well traveled in Asia.
