Thailand (pt.1 Bangkok)

I'm back from an amazing adventure and (unfortunately) back at school today.  BUT this gives me time to update this blog!  Me and my friend Tony packed tons of stuff into our 8/9 days in Thailand.

In Bangkok, we stayed near Khao San Road, which was dirty hippie/European/foreigner central.  It was weird, but there were tons of places to eat and shop along the road.   The weather was hot.  I was sweating from the time we landed and waited in the most ridiculous immigration line I've ever experienced.  We got totally ripped off by our taxi driver from the airport who charged us (700 baht) way more than we should have paid (even though we followed the book and stood in the normal taxi line and asked for a meter).

Our first full day, we visited Wat Pho, the Grand Palace, the riverfront, and tried out Dr. Fish.

The next day, we took a trip to a nearby beach (an hour or so by minibus) Pattaya and took a boat to Coral Island.  We met a new friend in our van named In Gil (from Korea!) who spent the day with us.  He even helped teach Tony how to float (fail).

The third day was our last day in Bangkok, and we took another trip outside the city to the floating market.

When we returned to Bangkok, we had a few hours to kill before going to the bus station to catch the overnight bus to Chiang Mai.  We ended up wandering around some more "local" streets where Tony's Lonely Planet book told us we could find good food.  This area of Bangkok felt much more friendly and calm than the foreigner-tourist-driven areas where we spent most of our time.

Later, we made our way to the bus station which was the craziest, most crowded bus station I've ever seen.  This could have been due to the fact that it was the start to the Lunar New Year holiday, but I'm not entirely sure.  There were so many people.  Our bus to Chiang Mai left around 8:30pm, showed us a movie until around 11, then shut off the lights for sleepy time.  We got tickets on a "VIP" bus so the seats reclined a good bit and there was a lot of leg room.  We also got lucky because we booked the front row seats which happened to be on the 2nd floor of the bus so we had extra space in front.  The downside to these seats was that road lights were kinda bright coming through the window.  We must have been flying because the bus pulled into a station around 5:30am, and the bus attendant came up to tell us we were at Chiang Mai (1 hour earlier than expected).