Travel Photography

Travel Stories

A travel blog for a long-term expat, backpacker, traveler, ESL teacher, and photographer. 

Bangkok

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To get to Myanmar in the cheapest way possible, we went via Bangkok. Unfortunately, our plane got cancelled and we got stuck in Thailand for a day. We booked a crazy hotel and by crazy, I mean please visit the site I linked. haha. The rooms were basic but the whole hotel is designed the same was as it was when it opened over fifty years ago. The pool, the garden, the lobby, the restaurant, it was all dressed in its original time-period. The hotel is in a district where many hotels that cater to Arab tourists. The area was swarming with women from hijabs to burqas, and strangely enough, not much further down the road, was the area known as Soi Cowboy -  a center of hookers, strip clubs, seedy bars, and even a ladyboy strip club. Indeed, we did go into the ladyboy bar and it was a very interesting experience. Japanese tourists were the most popular among the ladyboys and when a Japanese man walked in, they were warmed. We were quite neglected because they knew we were the bad kind of tourists - coca-cola ordering people just interested in observing. As for sites in Bangkok, we decided to explore some basic sites. Taxis, when they use meters, were very cheap so we were lazy most of the time and took a bunch of taxis.  We first went to the main palace which was swarming with horrible, pushy Chinese bus tourists who travel in packs and overrun any single, small-grouped tourists. After seeing the cost of the palace and the amount of people, we were immediately turned off the idea and headed on to the next site, Wat Pho. This temple was beautiful and I have zero complaints. It was beautiful, there was a procession taking place, and it was authentic. Highly recommended. We walked for a few hours around the city. We also visited Khaosan Road which is where the most of the foreign traveler population hangs out bargaining for cheap poorly made clothes, getting wasted, and getting thai massages. It was a seedy, unpleasant area and dirty - by dirty I mean I had a rat run on top of my feet. haha.

Another highlight included attending a Muay Thai kickboxing show. We really did not do as many sites as we possibly could due to inevitable laziness from Myanmar's trip.  Check out the photos below.