The craziest city of Thailand: Bangkok

How to begin?

If you read my first article My story short, you lnow what brought me to make the step to finally realize my solo dream trip to Southeast Asia.
I booked my flight three weeks before the departure and I decided to finally do something that really fulfilled me.

Where did I find the courage to book that flight and fly to Bangkok by myself?
As a woman we all know that it’s never that simple, since unfortunately, everything is always more dangerous for us. That’s one of the main reasons why I choose Southeast Asia as my first solo travel destination and you will be able to tell how safe Thailand is, only when you get there.

I arrived to Bangkok on April 25th and spent 3 full days there and even if I really enjoyed the city, for me personally 3 days were enough, but now that I am back I can’t wait to go back and discover more of this crazy city.
I had no expectations at all and I really had no idea about what I was going through, the temperature was incredibly hot, since I arrived in April which is still considered one of the hottest months.
My first thought was obviously ‘’What if I won’t meet people?" And I just stopped to think about it at the moment I got to Bangkok airport.

First feelings

Bangkok airport is tricky, there is not a lot of signs and you should check how to get to your destination in the city center definitely before if you want to find the cheapest option.
Of course there are a lot of options and people trying to sell you ticket for expensive buses, but I decided to take the most local one without even really knowing. The public buses (mine was bus A2) look a lot like the once we see in movies, very old school, in brown, yellowish colors, with leather sits and… one and a half hours of bus ride costed me only around 1,25€ and I couldn’t believe it!

But let’s go back to my question: “What if I won’t meet people?’’. I answered it straight after I got into that bus. A girl with smiling eyes was just sitting there, like me. The only two none Asian people that were taking a public bus to reach our hostels. Her name was Irene and we started talking in English until we found out both of us were Italians and traveled in the same exact plane.

From then on we hanged out for the 3 days and when I got to my hostel, the Rich8 hostel,I was so lucky to meet 3 lovely Germans girls that have been traveling through Thailand from South to North (so in my opposite directions) and were almost at the end of their Thailand backpacking adventure. The hostel itself was not the most social hostel, but it was very clean and I had the luck to meet the nicest people that became my "friends" for the next 3 days.

This experience was not my first hostel experience, since I had already been in hostels in Australia and Portugal, but it was definitely different. For Thai people, which are mostly Buddhist, there is only one rule: take your shoes off before getting in and who knows me, knows that I love walking around barefoot!

But now, which activities did I do and which are the once I enjoyed the most? I will start saying that I enjoyed all of them, but there are definitely some that you need to do if you go to Bangkok.

Discovering Thai food

will start with the food that I tried in Bangkok since it’s one of my favorite topics.

On my first night in Bangkok,I had my first Pad Thai from a street food cart in the parallel street of Khaosan road, Rambuttry Road. The place is not even on maps since it was not a real restaurant, but it was so far the best I had in Thailand. I am leaving a picture of the place at the end of this chapter and one of my maps and try to spot this place!

My favorite one was the vegetarian one, with tofu and even if I am not vegetarian, I always try to avoid meeting in general and I can say that in Thailand I probably had met only twice in a month.

It is very recommended to be careful to meet and fish, and make sure the one you eat it’s fresh otherwise you can easily get food poisoning (I was very lucky and never got it, but almost all the people I met got it).

Another aspect to be careful are ice and tap water because they can be contaminated. I never had any issue luckily and I also brushed my teeth with tap water and nothing really happened, the important thing is not to swallow it (I was still using water from the bottle in Bangkok since I was still a bit scared being my first destination lol).

As for ice, almost all the places use good ice, but it is always good to double check.
My roommate in the hostel showed me a trick to understand if the ice is good or not from its shape. If Is rounded with the hole, she said, it means is good, otherwise it could be bad (I am not sure about the source of this, but travelers tips are always appreciated and from there on using the tip nothing bad really happened!)

Another dish that shocked me at first was the Yellow Curry. My first curry was so spicy that my noose was running so much, so from then on I always remembered to tell them to make it “no spicy’’ (in Thai you can say “mai pet’’ ). If you know Italy you also know that the region I am from, Calabria, is the land of peperoncino (Calabrian chilly), but boy, their chillies are another level!

You don’t always need a plan

Yes, some things just happen if you just follow your gut.
Let’s go to the activities that I did in this crazy city full of temples, culture and chaos.

I am not going to make a list of what to do in Bangkok, because I feel that this blog is more of a diary with advices and personal experience that you can keep tight if one day you will decide to experience it!

So, are you ready?

- On my first night, other than eating that amazing Pad Thai I also walked around with Irene with no real clue of where we were going and we ended up with a very local fair in the National Museum Park following the lights. We were literally the only foreigners and everyone was dressed with traditional clothing looking at us in a funny way since we were sitting on the grass watching a show on the stage that was completely in Thai and we were still enjoying it so much.

We also met a very nice family that was selling tea and after buying some, they started offering us food to try and they were so curious about our culture and our travel plans.
That’s when I first noticed for the first time how nice and pure Thai people are.

Temples and activities you can't skip

- On my second day in Bangkok, I decide to join my Germans roommates, and we started our day by getting a ferry to cross the main river and go to the other side to visit some temples. This ride was very entertained since it started raining so much while we were on the ferry. Oh yes, I forgot to tell you that Bangkok gave me a rainy welcome, but my first tropical rain is never going to be forgotten!
 
The first temple we visited was the Wat Arun temple. This is actually a complex of temples with a big one in the middle. It was the first temple I have visited, and I didn’t know yet that it was going to be very different from all the once that I would have seen from then on. The Wat Arun has not only a beautiful location on the riverside, but it’s majestically colorful and has a very particular shape.

Crossing again the bridge we walked through the Flower market, that if you really like to immerse yourself in the local culture, you have to visit. My photo gallery will be on the blog soon. Don't forget to check it out!
In the meantime here's a taste of it.

Passed that we got to the Wat Pho temple or temple of the Reclining Buddha, mostly known for the huge impressing reclining golden Buddha.

Not tired of the two temples of the day, Irene and I decide to proceed and climb the Golden Mount temple (Wat Saket). Once again we decide to get the public transports and we end up again in one of those old buses without any air conditioning and paying not more than 10 cents. We were so happy about our decision anyways, since no tourist get on these local buses and the end of the day we didn’t really want to be tourists!

And here we go again, we climbed the 344 steps under the burning sun, that rise up in the afternoon, but it was the best decision ever.
I suddenly felt like I was far away from the chaos of the city, in a peaceful oasis on top of it. The "window on the city” and the 360° view we had from there was just impressing and unexpected.
I could see a skyline I had no idea Bangkok had, and I was wondering why and where those huge building were hiding, since until now the only kind of lifestyle I was seeing in the center of the city was poor people living in little “houses’’ with big families living in no more than one room, each with their own alive chicken outside that was probably going to be their dinner the next day (sorry, it sounds cruel, but I don't think it was their pet).

After reaching the top of the Mount we find ourselves in a traditional local Buddhist ceremony that we had no idea it was going to happen. It seemed like we were just in the right places at the right time and I couldn’t feel more grateful.

There were monks, local people and some other foreigners that were singing Thai songs to the huge golden buddha and going around it in a circle. At some point they grabbed us to join them and gave us flowers bracelets and only after we understood that these were gift for the buddha. After the celebration a traditional dance show went and I was impressed by the position and flexibility of the ladies fingers, that only after reading a book, I learned that they are trained with some old traditional methods, probably also painful, to have them like this.

After this unexpected afternoon, I decide to take a little break at the hostel and go to Chinatown at night. Bangkok’s Chinatown is very famous for its street food and its signs in Chinese with a lot of colors.I was a bit skeptical about the food, but then another German friend, Niklas, started to buy random food for us to try.
He was making fun of me the whole time since I was making the weirdest faces while trying the different food he bought. If you want to see how a night in Chinatown trying weird food looks like you can check out his YouTube video at the 15:02 minute (sorry guys some parts are in German, but still fun!).

The golden side of Bangkok

- My last day in Bangkok was a bit different and more chilled since I was going to have a night bus to Chiang Mai on that night. In the morning, I decide to have some “solo time” since I haven’t spent a lot of time alone since I got to Bangkok and one of the main purposes of my trip was learning how to enjoy my own company and I have to admit, I never felt alone, not even when I was on my own.

First thing in the morning I grabbed a Mango smoothie (my drug in Thailand) and went to visit the Royal Palace.I wasn’t sure about going or not since the entrance is a bit “expensive’’ compared to the normal prices in Thailand. The “expensive” I am talking about, in fact, is 15€ which can seem like a normal price to us, but not if you are traveling in Asia since a Pad Thai can cost 60cents

The Royal Palace is a very big complex and you definitely need a half day to visit it all (in my case I spent a morning and that was enough). Oh, and you can’t skip the traditional Thai dance show! It’s included in the same ticket and you will be brought with a cart to the theatre to see this dance show that consists in the different traditional dances of every of the regions in Thailand. For me as a dancer was very interesting even if the music they dance on is so relaxing that sometimes I wanted to fall asleep because of my jet lag… (sh*t I should have kept this secret!)

We got there with the fastest way which was a 18cents ferry, cutting through the river.
I was surrounded by super modern buildings and it felt like being in Manhattan for a while. I went in the Central World shopping mall which was the biggest I have ever been since it's considered the biggest mall in the world, and I was very shocked by that.

But why was I so shocked? Haven’t I ever seen a shopping mall?
Of course I did, but during the ferry ride to get there I have noticed a big contrast. The dwelling where people were living close to the river and their conditions. Clothes hanging everywhere, people laying outside on the burning ground, mattresses on the floors of the dwellings and people getting dirty water from the river.
And once I got to the modern part of the city I just asked myself: how possible is that less than 1km away there is so much poorness and then you get to the end of the pier and you can see this apparent wellness?

I say "apparent" because probably not a lot of Thai people live on this side of the city.
I couldn’t get over the drastic difference of lifestyle in such a short distance. Why the world invested in this very new part of the city couldn’t instead help these people living in these conditions?

I left Bangkok with this extreme contrast and reflection.
I hope we will be able to make the world better.

I swear the next articles won’t be this long, but even if I was in Bangkok for only 3 days, you can tell they were intense and you just can’t stop moving in this city!

See you on the next adventure!

xoxo, Carmi