Bangkok

Since we did not want to sit in a bus for an entire day, we chose to take a plane from Phnom Penh to Bangkok. In Thailand, we were welcomed by a taxi driver who brought us from the airport into the city and who could barely stop talking and giving us tips on what to do in Bangkok. Despite talking a lot, he barely spoke English and always used the google translator on his phone while driving. While our trip to Thailand was smooth, our overall start was not as we did not withdraw any Thai Baht at the airport and arrived late in the evening. After checking into our hotel, we went to a restaurant but they only accepted cash. And by the time we got our card from the hotel and got some cash, most restaurants in the area were already closed. A foodstand on the street unfortunately also stopped serving food but at least we could buy a beer to satisfy our hunger a bit. This gave us enough energy to eventually find some food in a restaurant on an underground floor of a shopping mall.

We spent three nights at the LITA Bangkok hostel, where we had a nice little room but unfortunately extremely hard mattresses. However, the staff was very friendly and brought us a topper to save our backs. During those days, we could use the metro for free, which was a measure put in place by the government due to the high levels of smog. So we could save some money at the cost of wearing masks occasionally.

On our first day, we took the metro to visit the Grand Palace. However, we could not enter the palace because we didn’t wear long pants. We could have bought a pair from one of the many street vendors who made a business out of unprepared tourists like us but we didn’t feel like buying pants just for wearing once due to limited luggage space. So we just went to a restaurant to cool down and do some planning instead. We then took a boat to cross the river and get lunch at the Wang Lang market. We then hopped on the boat again to head down the river from where we could see the Wat Arun temple before disembarking and walking to China Town where preparation for the Chinese New Year was underway. After enjoying the crowd in China Town, we headed back to our hostel where we attempted to do laundry but the machine decided not to work. A receptionist then brought our laundry to some other place to get it washed and we could then at least use the hostel’s dryer to dry it. The receptionist also printed some timetables for taking a train to the train and floating market. But this seemed not as straightforward (let’s hear it for the amazing public transportation in Switzerland!) so we just booked a guided tour for the next day instead.

On our second day, we then did the tour to the train market and the floating market. While the train market was similar to the one in Hanoi in that there are way too many people way too close to a moving train, the floating market was something new and special to us. It features small canals through a village that are frequented by small and way overpowered boats. We could hop on one of these boats from where you could tell the driver to stop at any of the stands alongside the canals if you wanted to buy something. We mostly enjoyed the ride but got some coconut ice cream to at least get the experience of buying something at a floating market once. In hindsight, we think it could have been better to explore the markets ourselves to not be as rushed but oftentimes it just is what it is.
The alert reader may have noticed that this was Matthias’ birthday which we celebrated with delicious Indian food at Indique and some cocktails at the Flashback Rooftop Bar before calling it a (birth)day.

And that already sums up our little Bangkok experience as on the following day, we made our way back to the airport and flew to our next destination.

Just a few places we were eating or drinking something which were close to our hotel:
- Breakfast Story Sok (big variety of breakfast)
- Indique - Great Indian Restaurant in Bangkok (This is one of the best Indian meals we had on our journey so far but probably also the most expensive.)
- Pad Thai Kung Yai Siam (Little place where you can only eat Pad Thai.)
- Flashback Rooftop Bar (nice views)Read more