Bangkok, the city that never sleeps, February 26
On the way to our wedding we've been through numerous cities, starting off, we left at Atlanta Heartsfield Jackson International airport. Sadly we realized that our traveling partners, Laura and Ricardo wouldn't make it on the same flight so they went on to Minneapolis while we continued our journey through Detroit. The funny part about Detroit is their extremely Asia oriented concourse. Where in Atlanta we add the spanish translations to everything, Detroit accommodates their many East Asian travelers by providing them with everything in Mandarin as well. We found it hilarious (especially Purna), that they use the word luggage instead of baggage.
The flight to Narita, Japan was quite smooth, although we were extremely hungry and Delta (as we found out) is quite behind on the trend to include vegan and vegetarian options on their flights. Thus we spent the... 16 hours, devastatingly hungry and awake. Laura and Ricardo were lucky that a vegetarian passengers didn't make it on the flight and they were able to share a meal together. We met each other again at Narita. (As I'm writing this, I literally go through the whole trip in my head and walk through all the airports again and again.)
The problem with stand-by passengers is that their seat on the flight isn't always sure, but we had already booked a nice 4 star hotel suite for the two "nights" we'd have to spend in Bangkok. The nights turned out to be about 3 hours of sleep each but more about that later. Luckily they got a seat and we were all traveling to Bangkok together. Purna, Dharpa, Laura, Ricardo and I. This flight also took quite a bit longer than expected, we ended up flying from Japan to Bangkok for a good six hours. We landed around 23:30 at Suvarnabhumi International Airport. We took a taxi for about 600 THB (translates to about 20 dollars as the dollar is worth about 35 THB) and we were on to our hotel. The driver was extremely nice and friendly, although he only knew a few words in English. He immediately wanted to know where we were from (USA and Mexico) and why we were in Thailand. Apparently there was a rule against having 5 people in the same car, but as we started to find out, they don't always cling so much to the rules. Laura's luggage had been rerouted from Minneapolis to LA and was supposed to come the next day, which left her with no fresh clothing at all and I lent her some of mine. Which reminds me, I'm not sure where that black shirt is.. :p
Anyways we arrived to the hotel, where the receptionist and everyone again proved how incredibly sweet Thai people are. We've gotten used to the Southern hospitality in Atlanta, but that is really nothing compared to what we've been experiencing abroad (specifically Puerto Rico and Thailand, and of course Purna's adorable family in India and Bangladesh). So we were all starving after basically 1,5 days of no eating and craving some food desperately. But once everyone had showered and rested a little bit, it was 01:00 and most everything was closed. This when we found out about the overpowering presence of 7/11 stores in Thailand. They're literally at every street corner and often you'll see more than one in the same street. After searching for a good while for any street food stall that offered vegetarian food we resorted to our trustworthy 7/11, where again we couldn't read anything. Dharpa warned us that most items have fish as one of their main ingredients, which seemed to be true, seeing the amount of fishes smiling at us from the packages. Laura and Ricardo got a hot cheese sandwich, rice with soy fish and asparagus and soy sauce and we shared some chips. As the two brothers are very doubtful of the soy meats in different countries, and tend to stick to their guns. For the Dutchies amongst us "Wat de boer nie kent da freet ie nie". As the wifey I followed along with the hubs, cause I didn't want to disturb him in the middle of the night after a long travel. Along our walk back we encountered quite a number of rats, which were chilling around the food stalls. Laura and I screamed and ran very quickly, and provided a lot of amusement to the local Thai. We thought it might be time for bed until we ran into a little 24 hour pub. They had IKEA flower pots on the table, so I was immediately sold. On the menu sadly no pizza margarita, but they could make an exception for us, after much debating with the waiters. :) Purna decided that it was time for him to make an effort and approach the gentle cook who brought our pizza in Thai. This, as you might imagine, resulted in Purna trying to say "thank you" but he accidentally said "go away", and the waiter was dearly confused. The bar only played Spanish music, from a decade ago, which was really weird for Laura and Ricardo (since they are native Spanish speakers).
In the morning after, well, a few hours after we left the Night Owl pub the unknown rays of sun woke me and I decided it was the perfect time for a swim. After all, rooftop swimming on your first actual day in Thailand.. who can say no to that? Well it turned out that the gentlemen that were accompanying Laura and me weren't so much fan of the idea. We enjoyed looking over the smokey skyline, although it is still quite hard for me to pinpoint Bangkok's city centre. There are skyscrapers in the most remote locations of the city. Later, after enjoying a much needed Indian style breakfast at the hotel (where Ricardo turned out to love his first meeting with paratha's) we got a brightly orange colored taxi to bring us to the big buddha temple. Although we'd been all jet lagged and tired already, we became pumped up by adrenaline to explore this new concrete jungle. Our first stop, the Buddha temple featured beautiful rooftops (as we've only seen it from the outside), all decorated with gold plate and luxuriously looking panels. A Thai gentleman approached us, breaking is own lunch break to give us the advice to get a view of Bangkok from the water. We started to haggle over the price a little, while making sure this was what everyone wanted to do and got it down to 500. It'd be a beautiful boat-ride including a small floating market and a bunch of temples. What subsequently took most of my attention were the abundant komodo dragons.
The flight to Narita, Japan was quite smooth, although we were extremely hungry and Delta (as we found out) is quite behind on the trend to include vegan and vegetarian options on their flights. Thus we spent the... 16 hours, devastatingly hungry and awake. Laura and Ricardo were lucky that a vegetarian passengers didn't make it on the flight and they were able to share a meal together. We met each other again at Narita. (As I'm writing this, I literally go through the whole trip in my head and walk through all the airports again and again.)
The problem with stand-by passengers is that their seat on the flight isn't always sure, but we had already booked a nice 4 star hotel suite for the two "nights" we'd have to spend in Bangkok. The nights turned out to be about 3 hours of sleep each but more about that later. Luckily they got a seat and we were all traveling to Bangkok together. Purna, Dharpa, Laura, Ricardo and I. This flight also took quite a bit longer than expected, we ended up flying from Japan to Bangkok for a good six hours. We landed around 23:30 at Suvarnabhumi International Airport. We took a taxi for about 600 THB (translates to about 20 dollars as the dollar is worth about 35 THB) and we were on to our hotel. The driver was extremely nice and friendly, although he only knew a few words in English. He immediately wanted to know where we were from (USA and Mexico) and why we were in Thailand. Apparently there was a rule against having 5 people in the same car, but as we started to find out, they don't always cling so much to the rules. Laura's luggage had been rerouted from Minneapolis to LA and was supposed to come the next day, which left her with no fresh clothing at all and I lent her some of mine. Which reminds me, I'm not sure where that black shirt is.. :p
Anyways we arrived to the hotel, where the receptionist and everyone again proved how incredibly sweet Thai people are. We've gotten used to the Southern hospitality in Atlanta, but that is really nothing compared to what we've been experiencing abroad (specifically Puerto Rico and Thailand, and of course Purna's adorable family in India and Bangladesh). So we were all starving after basically 1,5 days of no eating and craving some food desperately. But once everyone had showered and rested a little bit, it was 01:00 and most everything was closed. This when we found out about the overpowering presence of 7/11 stores in Thailand. They're literally at every street corner and often you'll see more than one in the same street. After searching for a good while for any street food stall that offered vegetarian food we resorted to our trustworthy 7/11, where again we couldn't read anything. Dharpa warned us that most items have fish as one of their main ingredients, which seemed to be true, seeing the amount of fishes smiling at us from the packages. Laura and Ricardo got a hot cheese sandwich, rice with soy fish and asparagus and soy sauce and we shared some chips. As the two brothers are very doubtful of the soy meats in different countries, and tend to stick to their guns. For the Dutchies amongst us "Wat de boer nie kent da freet ie nie". As the wifey I followed along with the hubs, cause I didn't want to disturb him in the middle of the night after a long travel. Along our walk back we encountered quite a number of rats, which were chilling around the food stalls. Laura and I screamed and ran very quickly, and provided a lot of amusement to the local Thai. We thought it might be time for bed until we ran into a little 24 hour pub. They had IKEA flower pots on the table, so I was immediately sold. On the menu sadly no pizza margarita, but they could make an exception for us, after much debating with the waiters. :) Purna decided that it was time for him to make an effort and approach the gentle cook who brought our pizza in Thai. This, as you might imagine, resulted in Purna trying to say "thank you" but he accidentally said "go away", and the waiter was dearly confused. The bar only played Spanish music, from a decade ago, which was really weird for Laura and Ricardo (since they are native Spanish speakers).
In the morning after, well, a few hours after we left the Night Owl pub the unknown rays of sun woke me and I decided it was the perfect time for a swim. After all, rooftop swimming on your first actual day in Thailand.. who can say no to that? Well it turned out that the gentlemen that were accompanying Laura and me weren't so much fan of the idea. We enjoyed looking over the smokey skyline, although it is still quite hard for me to pinpoint Bangkok's city centre. There are skyscrapers in the most remote locations of the city. Later, after enjoying a much needed Indian style breakfast at the hotel (where Ricardo turned out to love his first meeting with paratha's) we got a brightly orange colored taxi to bring us to the big buddha temple. Although we'd been all jet lagged and tired already, we became pumped up by adrenaline to explore this new concrete jungle. Our first stop, the Buddha temple featured beautiful rooftops (as we've only seen it from the outside), all decorated with gold plate and luxuriously looking panels. A Thai gentleman approached us, breaking is own lunch break to give us the advice to get a view of Bangkok from the water. We started to haggle over the price a little, while making sure this was what everyone wanted to do and got it down to 500. It'd be a beautiful boat-ride including a small floating market and a bunch of temples. What subsequently took most of my attention were the abundant komodo dragons.
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