Bangkok

Day 1
My flight to Thailand was at 11:55am so I got picked up from the hostel in Bali at 8:30am and the drive to the airport was about 15 minutes. After getting through security I got an early lunch at a diner type restaurant and then went to my gate to wait for my flight. I bought disinfectant baby wipes to wipe down the seats in the airport and the plane because of corona. The flight to Bangkok was 4 hours and 20 minutes so it wasn’t too bad. Once I landed in Bangkok someone came up to me asking if I needed a taxi and we were able to haggle and agree on a fair price. I was staying at the Bed Station Hostel, which is about a 30 minute drive from Don Mueang airport. The guy walked me to a car with a driver and helped to put my bags in the trunk. I asked if they knew where I was going and they said they did. After 5 minutes in the car we dropped the guy off who originally discussed the price with me (his english was okay, a lot better than the driver). After 30 minutes in the car we pulled into a large parking lot and I realized they brought me to the bus station. I tried to explain to the driver the mistake and he wasn’t really understanding what I was saying. I didn’t pick up a SIM card for my phone yet so I couldn’t use my maps and my phone was on 10%. The hostel was 20 minutes from the bus station but we drove around for another 2 hours because the driver had no idea where the hostel was. I showed him the hostel address on my phone and he handed me a paper map and asked me to find it on the map…..umm I had just landed in this unknown city. Then he handed me his phone to search the place online but his phone was in Thai so we didn’t get very far with that either. He eventually stopped to ask another local for instruction and close to 3 hours later we were FINALLY there. Well, not quite, I had to walk 3 blocks with a dead phone to find the hostel. Thankfully I ran into a girl who spoke English and was able to point me in the right direction. After checking in, I dropped my bags in the room and took a shower before I ran to 7 Eleven to get a SIM card and a cup of noodles for dinner. I was so tired so I came back to the hostel to watch Friends (it wasn’t taken off of Netflix anywhere outside the US) and to catch up on sleep. My friend Kait was supposed to meet me in Thailand so that I had someone to celebrate my birthday week with but due to corona she decided not to come (which ended up being the right call).

Day 2
I woke up and watched some Netflix in the morning and around 12pm I went to the restaurant at the hostel and ate lunch. I got a grab and went to the Khlong Lat Mayom Floating Market which was a 20 minute drive from the hostel. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, I thought it would be a lot of small boats on the water selling food but I didn’t see much of that. I am not sure if that was corona related or what but there weren’t as many people there as I am sure there usually is. I paid to go on a boat tour down the river that stopped at another floating market called Watsaphan, a smaller market and a flower farm which was nice to walk around. After checking out the market it was time to do some temple hopping. First stop was Wat Arun, a buddhist temple right on the water. It was beautiful, all the buildings and the statues had so much detail to them it was really breathtaking. There is a ferry that takes you to the other side of Bangkok with views of the city, so I took that to go to the next temple. Wat Phra Chetuphon also known as Wat Pho, is popular for the giant reclining gold Buddha which was really spectacular. All the temples have such long names and sometimes go by other names so it got a little confusing because there are so many throughout the city. I wanted to check out more temples but the popular ones all closed at 5pm and there wasn’t enough time to see them all. I started walking back towards my hostel, it was about a 45 minute walk, and stopped to grab food at a street vendor. I was planning on going to a rooftop bar to view the city and get a drink but my hostel was somewhat far from the downtown city area so I decided against it. I went back to the hostel to relax and go to bed early. I was going to spend 2 full days in Bangkok but last minute I changed my plans to be able to add one of the northern towns onto my itinerary so this was my only full day.Read more