Bangkok Again
Back to the Familiar
After our worst tour experience ever in the Philippines, saying that Bangkok was a welcome relief would be an understatement. With family in Bangkok, it is a comfortable place to land and we spent just over three weeks there with Yuki’s family. We planned this trip to Thailand to coincide with Yuki’s aunt from San Francisco, who spent her one-week vacation in Bangkok.
On our first day in the country, we actually left Bangkok for Hua Hin, which is a beach town to the south along the Gulf of Thailand. Hua Hin is one of my favourite places in Thailand because it is close enough to Bangkok to be easily accessible, but isn’t as chaotic. There is a nice, long stretch of beach in town. The last time we were in Hua Hin was in 2013, at the conclusion of our backpacking graduation trip. On that trip, we were there by ourselves and one of the highlights was watching the sunrise break over the expanse of sea.
This time our trip to Hua Hin was done with Yuki’s family, and we spent a lot of time going to night markets. We went to three night markets, as well as Sam Phan Nam Floating Market. The night markets were some of the coolest I’ve seen because the wares for sale are classy enough to not feel cheap, and at every stall something different is sold. Usually when we go to markets we see half a dozen shops selling the same cheap trinkets, but not here. Sam Phan Nam wasn’t actually a “floating” market but we suspect it is called such because it surrounds a (disgustingly green) man-made pond; nonetheless, it was an interesting place to visit.
Though we didn’t buy any trinkets, we got lots of good, cheap seafood, and my all-time-favourite drink: a fresh mango smoothie.
Even though we had three weeks in Thailand, we didn’t actually do that much. We just weren’t interested in revisiting any of the major tourist attractions and were just looking for some downtime.
A few months ago I saw a video for the three-headed elephant at the Erawan Museum and remembered driving past it a few times in Bangkok on previous trips. I figured it would be something to do and mentioned it to Yuki’s family, who kindly took us there. Below is the video I found on YouTube.
Erawan Museum is interesting because the inside is like a shrine but also houses a significant number of old artifacts and Buddha statues.
I also mentioned to Yuki’s family that I’d never been to the Temple of the Dawn on the other side of the Chao Phraya river. To my surprise, neither had Yuki or her mom.
To our surprise, there isn’t much to see on the temple grounds given its popularity. The main temple is a pyramid from the early 1800s. It has three tiers and Yuki’s dad said that he went to the top when he first came to Bangkok 30 years ago. Now, only the lowest level is open to the public and the stairs are roped off. There isn’t much to see from this lower elevation. In my opinion, the temple is most beautiful when seen from the river at night.
So what did we do with all our time in Bangkok? We started planning for our next destination: Japan. We’re going to spend three months there! Perhaps for the first time since our graduation trip in 2013, we actually managed to work out our travel plans more than a few weeks in advance. Learning from our mistake in the Philippines, where we thought we could figure it out as we go, only to find out that there wasn’t much to do and that most hotels were all booked up — we’re proactively planning Japan.
It helps that Japan is one of the easiest countries to plan for. The transportation system is second to none, and every conceivable tourist attraction has at least one (if not multiple) webpages with descriptions, opening times, costs, and detailed directions. By the time we leave on our great Japan tour, we will have roughly planned out every city and day for over three months.
We are beyond excited to travel Japan. Before this great round-the-world adventure began, we agreed that Japan is the only place both of us really wanted to go and spend a long, long time in. We’re planning to spent three months just to see the bottom half of Japan. It’s going to be spectacular!
