Day 85 – Going to Bangkok, Thailand (27/10/2015)
Today it was time to leave Indonesia. It’s ridiculous how time suddenly flies. It hurts to think that half of our traveling is already over. I don’t even know how to deal with that fact. Because Ulu Watu was our favorite place in Indonesia, it wasn’t easy to leave but at the same time we were excited about going to a new country.
We had to get up too early. Drinking the night before a traveling day is not a good idea. I didn’t feel that great and I didn’t even wanna think about going on a plane today. For the last time we had the amazing breakfast at the Gong. That’s one of many things that I will miss. Then it was time to leave. We said bye to our group of people and hit the road. Luckily two Australian guys had to go to Kuta and that’s where Leila went as well, so we could all share a taxi together and Caleb and I got dropped off at the airport. We were way too early so we were sitting around at the airport for about three hours before we finally got on the plane. Three hours later we arrived in Kuala Lumpur. Being back in Malaysia made us think about back in the days when we were new travelers. It was such a different kind of traveling than in Indonesia. In Indonesia it was more like a vacation feeling and in Malaysia we were serious backpackers. The standards in those two countries are very different and I’m a bit worried that Indonesia spoiled us too much. At this point in time I can’t imagine that I would stay in rooms that we had in Malaysia. But who knows what’s awaiting us in Thailand.
After about two hours at the airport of Kuala Lumpur we boarded the plane to Bangkok. Flying with Malaysian Airlines was kind of stressful. Obviously I’m really not afraid of flying (I was a flight attendant) but with the incidents that happened with this airline, I didn’t have a lot of trust in it. We still landed safely though.
Getting through customs at Bangkok airport was quite a pain in the ass. All we wanted was to get to our hostel and have a new home again. I really hate the traveling days. Traveling is the worst about traveling. You know what I mean? 🙂 I was just too tired and not ready yet, to get used to a new country. We had no idea about the currency, we didn’t have a lot of cash, we had no SIM card, we had no idea about the prices, we didn’t know what the best way was to get to our hostel and it was already dark outside. Way too much to think about. We got a SIM card and a taxi and finally arrived at Better Bed Hostel. This place is great! We have a real blanket again. Like in Singapore. I couldn’t wait to cuddle with it. We’re staying in a 10-bed mixed dorm. Everything is new, modern and clean and the owners (?) are very friendly and helpful.
It was quite late so we just went to a shopping mall, about five minutes away from our place to grab some dinner. The only place that was still open was KFC. Not the Thai food we imagined but it’s okay for now.
Day 86 – Shopping in Bangkok (28/10/2015)
We slept great in our nice beds with our wonderful blankets and we had a nice breakfast at the hostel. We are pretty bad with making plans, we don’t have any idea of what we wanna do and see in Bangkok or in the rest of Thailand. That’s why we had a shopping day today. We went to the nearest sky train station and got a day pass because it was only CHF 3.00 per person. When we got to the stop, where we had to change lines we realized that our day pass is only valid for the sky train, which is pretty ridiculous because that’s only two lines. I was angry and being in the city for maybe half an hour, I was already stressed out. I hate big cities more and more. We had no choice, we had to get another ticket because to get to Fortune Mall, we had to use the MRT. The mall was huge and the funny thing was that most of the stores were electronic stores. Asia really is like that I guess. 🙂 For us it was perfect because our today’s shopping mission was to find the cheaper version of the GoPro. I think that was the easiest shopping task so far. It didn’t take us long to get one and we paid about CHF 70, which is pretty great. Caleb wanted to get one to take pictures under water. In my opinion we could have saved that money but you have to let boys have their toys, right?
The food court was full of Asian food, that’s why we decided to have lunch there. It was hard to decide what to get. We walked up and down and had no idea. We finally got some sushi. One piece was CHF 0.10. How exciting is that?! That was only the appetizer. After that we got a kind of soup with fish balls and other stuff in it. It was definitely not my favorite but at least we tried something new. Shopping task number two was to find flip flops for Caleb because his were falling apart. We went to Central Plaza, a mall right across the street. I can not believe how huge and modern the malls are here. It’s like a new world after being in Indonesia for 1.5 months. Unfortunately they didn’t have anything pleasing for Caleb but at least we finally got some cash. That makes me feel a lot better. Caleb looked up where we can find a Havaianas store and booked an Uber car to get there. That was the second time we used Uber and I still don’t know how much I like it. I don’t like the whole cashless thing. They just charge your credit card. You don’t get a receipt, they send you and e-mail instead.
So now we were at the Havaianas store at SIAM Center. Because their deal was to get 15% off the total price if you get two pairs, we both got one. Not cheap but I have to say that Havaianas make the best and prettiest flip flops. And because all we wear is flip flops, it is a good investment. No I’m not trying to justify our purchase to feel better. I’m just telling you how important it is to have good footwear because our feet carry us everywhere, blablabla…yes we spent too much money on flip flops but we really appreciate them. 🙂
We were pretty tired from walking around and went back to the hostel. We cooled off in the air-conditioned room for a while before we went for dinner. We initially wanted to go to a night market but because it started raining pretty crazy we decided to just go to the mall close to our place again. It’s a bit sad because we haven’t seen that much of Bangkok yet and we especially didn’t have enough Thai food yet but we will do better tomorrow. The only place that was kind of affordable for us after spending so much money today, was Subway.
Day 87 – Temples and Sky Bar (29/10/2015)
We had breakfast at the hostel and then it was sitting around time. Caleb’s parents have friends from back in the days, who live in Bangkok. The guy went to seminary with Caleb’s dad. They lost contact about 25 years ago and they asked us to find out where they are and to meet them if we can. Caleb started to search for them online and found them. Now we were about to meet that guy. Because he came by car and he doesn’t live that close we had to wait pretty much all morning. I was a bit upset because we only had half a day left in Bangkok and we hadn’t seen anything yet. But he eventually made it to the hostel and he was a really nice guy. We went for lunch with him to a really really sketchy place but the food was good. It was kind of a weird situation but we knew how important it was for Caleb’s parents. After lunch he showed us the church he goes to and then he brought us to Chao Phraya River, where Caleb and I took a boat to Tha Chang. We wanted to see the different temples in the area.
Pretty much as soon as we got off the boat, a guy started talking to us. He said that he was from the tourist police and he told us what to see. We still don’t know if that was true but he was a nice guy. He arranged a kind of tuk tuk tour for us, for a good price. First we went to Wat Intharawihan, a temple with a huge Buddha. It wasn’t very impressive and we kept going. Next stop was a tourist information. We told the tuk tuk driver that we don’t wanna stop there but he said if we do, he gets stamps for free gas. Because he was so honest about it, we went inside. We still had no plans for Thailand but we knew that we wanted to leave Bangkok tomorrow, so we thought it’s maybe not even such a bad idea to get some information. The guy there started talking about Kanchanaburi with the Erawan National Park and about floating markets and the Tiger Temple. It sounded pretty good but we didn’t wanna make any decisions yet, so we said we will be back. Next stop was Wat Benchamabophit. It was a nice made temple area but again not that impressive. We walked around for a bit, took pictures and had an ice cream and went back to our driver. Then we went to Thai Fashion. We thought it will be a market or something like that but it was a place where they make you custom suits. I really didn’t wanna go in there but it was the same deal for the driver again and because we’re such nice people we went inside. Leaving that place without getting anything was not easy but we made it out without spending money. Last but not least we went to Wat Pho, the reason why we actually came here. Wat Pho is an amazing Buddhist Temple. Such an impressive place. We took lots and lots of pictures and walked around for a while. The temple area is huge and there is a lot to see. One of the big sights is the Laying Buddha. With 46 meters length and 15 meters height, it is the biggest laying Buddha in town. Our tuk tuk tour was over, from now on we had to walk.
We really wanted to see the famous Khao San Road. It took forever to get there and we got stopped by tuk tuk drivers, who wanted to give us a ride, all the time. At one point we finally got there. I was tired and starving. We walked down the road and there were quite a lot of people, food stands with fried insects, loud music and people popping their lips to advertise the ping pong shows. Finally we saw the Thailand you always hear about but it was still not as crazy as we expected it to be. We had an okay dinner and then we wanted to see Sky Bar, the bar, which was in the movie The Hangover Part II. We wanted to get a taxi but that wasn’t easy. No one wanted to do it with taxi meter. At one point we saw two tourist girls trying to get a cab too, so we asked them where they wanna go. They had to go the same way, so we shared a taxi together. We got dropped off at a sky train station (public transportation in Bangkok is really bad) and went towards Sky Bar. It still took a while to walk there and when we finally made it, they told us that we can’t get in because Caleb was wearing shorts. We couldn’t believe it. We were pretty disappointed but we had no choice, we had to give up. On the way back to the sky train station we passed a small shop with clothes that had a “for rent” sign on the door. We had hope again. We went inside and Caleb rented a pair of jeans. He looked hilarious. How weird to just rent a pair of pants for some hours. I was so happy. The great thing was that we brought closed shoes because of the Palace we wanted to go to today, so now we were all set and ready to go up. The bar is on the 64th floor. It was all super fancy and with what we were wearing I literally felt like a homeless person but it was still very exciting to be up there. It’s definitely the coolest roof top bar I’ve ever seen in my life. We couldn’t wait to get a nice drink but when we looked at the menu we were speechless, not one drink was affordable with our day budget. However, it was so worth going up there.
We made our way back to the hostel, where we couldn’t wait to go to bed.
The Travelling Smiths 