East to Bangkok

January 14 – 19

Thai airport sign

We arrived in Bangkok a bit bleary-eyed. The flight was 9 hours overnight. Emma got the best sleep as she made a little nest on my lap and conked out for 6 hours. Bjorn was so excited by the fact that he had an in-seat movie viewer that he watched three movies before catching just a few hours sleep. Both Mitch and I slept a bit longer than Bjorn. There was a bit of bother at the passport control. We hadn’t booked a hotel yet and they wanted to know our address in Bangkok. We quickly looked up the name of a hotel and wrote it down. Six months ago, we wouldn’t think of arriving in a new country without a reservation.

We decided to eat first and then grab a taxi into the city. We spotted a sign that said, ”Magic Food Spot”. We walked through the small door to find a food court – Thai style. We browsed all the food booths only to discover that we must first buy special food tickets in denominations of 5 and 10 bhats. Bjorn and Emma both happily ate their plates of food with no complaints. This is also something I could not imagine six months ago. Both kids are now much more adventurous with their food choices.

Thai street food

Perhaps the happiest person during that meal was Mitch. As a vegetarian who eats sea food and sticks very religiously to a low fat diet, he was ecstatic. Here were not only one or two things he could eat but an entire food court filled with tasty choices. And to top it off our meal came to about $10. Now we would finally be able to stay within our budget.

We settled in an area of Bangkok called Banglamphu. It is essentially a backpackers’ ghetto. We saw more tourists here than in any other place on our trip so far. At first this bothered me somewhat but I soon discovered it was fantastic people watching while I was having my three dollar foot massage.

A small temple and shopping area several blocks from our hotel area.

Everything we needed was in a two or three block mostly pedestrian area. With laundry at only 1 dollar a kilo, we did load after load. Bjorn and I got three dollar hair cuts that were surprisingly good. We drank fresh fruit smoothies and good coffee and even found good homemade cinnamon rolls. Emma was overjoyed to find real, american, fluffy pancakes with actual syrup. We also had pad thai and green and red curry that made our eyes water because it was so spicy. Best of all, there was a very good used book store that actually had three large bags of children’s and teen books.

Originally, we were only going to stay a few days but we kept delaying our departure. Mitch even decided to get a colonoscopy as Bangkok General Hospital had a conveniently located clinic nearby, but that is a story for a later post.

We ventured out of our little enclave to do errands and explore the city. One day, we visited a beautiful temple with a gigantic reclining Buddha at Wat Pho.

Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho

The motto of the temple is“ Calmness brings happiness”. Inside the temple walls was an oasis of beautiful statues, ornate shrines and beautiful courtyards. The bustle and noise of Bangkok city streets only a distant hum in the background.

After five days, we finally packed up and boarded the night bus for the island of Koh Phagnan with bags bulging with extra books, clean dry clothes and very relaxed feet.

-Margit