Hot soup on the street on a hot day. Typical Bangkok style. Elevated train (BTS) in the background
Wastewater treatment plant next to exclusive golf course. Also typical Bangkok style. Taken from elevated train (BTS).
Finally found roast pork noodles at the "street food" area of one of the mall food courts.
I had first visited Bangkok in 2008 during my first visit to Asia. I really wanted to go back and see what I could remember. Unfortunately, I chose the wrong time of year. It was so uncomfortably hot. I did my best to make the most of the experience. I took a day trip to the Ayuthaya historical temple complex and I got to ride the third class train coach. Mostly, however, I spent my time in airconditioned malls trying the street food stands. I did take lots of photos of the infrastructure of Bangkok but as I write this (another reason why I haven't published in a while) my external hard drive, with a backup of all of my photos, died. Lucky for you, you won't have to see the photos of all of the mall escalators I went on. Instead, the hard drive Goddess seems to have left me with the photos I took at the cat cafe instead (my readers will know that I've been stopping at cat cafes around the world to find peace). Alas below, randomly intermixed between stories about how I wanted to get the hell out of Asia, you will see photos of Thai cats.
I rode the trains a whole lot.
I went to a lot of malls and judged the architecture. My favorite was Terminal 6, an airport-inspired mall where the workers dress like old school flight attendants.
I found the char siew equivalent, moo yang, pork stick. I ate noodle soup on the street. It was incredibly hot outside and I didn't really want hot soup but most of the street food options were different forms of hot noodle soup, alas.
The coolest part of my Bangkok experience was staying in a new apartment building that was built in the middle of a collection of alleyways. To get to my flat, I would take the BTS (elevated train) to Surasak and then walk for ten minutes through somewhat treacherous alleys with blind curves and speeding motobikes. It felt authentic, that's for sure. It reminded me that I could probably never really live an authentic Bangkok lifestyle. At the same time, Richard was moving to Bangkok and looking at apartments. He sent me some photos of the luxury options. I suppose this is another form of an authentic Bangkok lifestyle as well. You can live a nice life in Bangkok if you accept that there is very little accessible nature nearby.
I was looking into nearby hiking or waterfalls. I was looking into planning a trip to Chiang Mai. I thought spending time in the mountains of Pai would be nice. Instead, I went to the historical city of Ayuthaya for the day. I took the national train up north for a few hours and hopped off directly onto the tracks. This city was the capital of the Thai kingdom before it was destroyed by the Burmese invaders hundreds of years ago. The ruins of the temples had very little in the realm of signage and explanations. The tuk-tuk drivers that shuttle tourists around to the various temple sites were aggressive. The tuk-tuks were dangerous and too small for an average person to sit it. I had to crouch. Every tiny bump in the road resulted in my head banging the roof. I told the driver I wanted to stop for lunch to get noodles. He took me to a tourist trap where I had the most disgusting meal of my entire backpacking journey. It was offensive to Thai culture. I ordered noodles and they put some sauce on it that was just pure chemicals. It was totally inedible. When they gave me the check, the waitress laughed when she saw my full plate of food, as if she had seen this before. Then she asked me for a tip! I said. "I don't think so..." and she walked away again laughing. Not so funny for me.
After that experience, I did not really feel like booking a flight or taking the overnight train to Chiang Mai any longer. I started feeling like the glory days of backpacking Thailand were maybe ten years ago. I understand that travelers should expect to be uncomfortable at times. Hell, I've been sleeping in bunkbeds with strangers in the rooms. I understand that travelers should expect that some meals will be terrible and tourist traps will always exist. I did not appreciate being laughed at. I did not appreciate feeling scared in the back of the tuk-tuk. Getting around Bangkok required hopping on the backs of motobikes, swerving in-and-out of traffic. That made me feel scared too. I felt that I had done enough of that in Indonesia and I was ready for safer transport. Bangkok, and the area around it, could not offer me a sense of safety I was looking for. When I researched how to get to Pai from Chiang Mai, there were many warnings about the treacherous 3 hour mountain drive. Stories of puke bags and nausea and car accidents led me to book a flight to Vienna instead.
Night sky from the 777 Bangkok to Vienna passing over Azerbaijan.
It was time to say goodbye to the Asian leg of my trip. I did not get to see everything I wanted to see. I wanted to fly back to Indonesia and go to Medan, the capital of the island of Sumatra, and see the orangutans. However, with the hot weather and reading about the very muddy hike, I felt like I got my fix of muddy hikes in Laos. I wanted to visit Lake Toba and see the greatest lake of Indonesia. During my first week in Europe, hundreds of tourists would sadly perish in a ferry sinking accident in Lake Toba. It's too sad to even think about.
I had to follow my instinct. I would arrive in Vienna and see Steffi and her mom and start to feel the sense of security and comfort that I was needing at this point in my journey. I think this vulnerability at this stage of the game was very telling. My trip to Europe would be life-changing.
Enjoy this photo I took from the plane of the night sky passing over Azerbaijan (you can click on it to enlarge):