We dug under a plastic roofing that hangs down towards the street. A smell of fish and meat attacks my nose and the heavy air makes my head feel heavy. There are little stalls everywhere selling things from fruits and rice to living eels and frogs. A cat runs through the wet ground as we walk. Old ladies behind the desks smile. I almost step on a big catfish that has jumped down from a table and is trying to make an escape. Arno tries to tell one of the ladies that her fish is running away but she just smiles, didn't probably understand. Someone starts a scooter loaded with hundreds of eggs. I try to not get my flips flops wet while stumbling through the big fish buckets in the huge market.
Waddap! It's Linnea. We are currently still in Bangkok for the last night for now before heading to Myanmar (old Burma) tomorrow morning and sitting in the lobby of our hostel. Came yesterday morning pretty tired after a long flight through Kiev, Ukraine. I spent the 10 hour flight blogging, reading and playing Frozen freefall - which is pretty much like Candy Crush. I didn't get a lot of sleep, maybe like 2 hours while Arno was napping for 5 hours straight. But we still felt pretty okay when the plane landed in the morning.
After arriving at the airport and getting through immigration (witch happened surprisingly fast) we went to change into a little lighter clothing and headed to the train. Sitting next to locals we made it as close to downtown Bangkok as possible and then had to treck 4 km further. And oh the backpacks felt so much heavier than they had back home. Especially with the heat and dehydration. But as we kept walking we got more use to it. And I took a nice bubble tea to keep me focused on something else. And I think our lack of sleep started to turn into the level of hyper where you don't concentrate on things that much.
So we have both been in Thailand before and as we had left the stuff in our hostel we didn't feel the need to go sightseeing right away to Big Budha or Standing Budha or Happy Budha. Or the numerous beautiful tempels. We decided to just head down from the corner of our street and look for food. Sat down for some pad thai (costed us a little over a euro per portion) and kept walking. We found some nice local markets and just wandered around looking around.
Soon enough we found ourselves standing in front of a thai massage spa. One of the local ladies gave my shoulders a little taste of their thai massage and I basically ran inside for more. We got ourselves 30 minute massages for our backpack shoulders and backs. And oh did that feel nice. I have never heard my back cracking so many times and didn't know that I have that plenty vertebras until I heard the lady did some popping to each of 'em.
In the evening we took a ferry to Chinatown. They have an incredible selection of street food there. The locals make everything on a pan in front of you. And streetfood isn't as bad, dirty and unhealthy as usually thought. Now that you think of it, you can see how they prepare it in front of your eyes. You know how they cook, what they put in it and where they keep the ingridients. Plus hey, if you are traveling in a place like Bangkok, if the stomach bug wants to find you, it will. And usually on a trip like this you will enjoy a stomach ache in some point anyway. Little amount of bacteria is actually better than swimming in hand sanitizer.
In that point of the evening we were really waiting for the dim sums and buns that we'd been dreaming of already back home. So we went and ordered them + drinks for 8 euros. And that was some fancy eating! Then wanted to head back with the ferry, but they didn't run anymore. So we had to walk the 5 km. In total we had walked 23 kilometers that day so it was a good time to stop for drinks when we got to the hotel.
The next morning I woke up around 9:40 and sneaked down for a shower, letting Arno sleep. When I finally dared to wake him up we headed down the street for breakfast. Had no plan for the day, so as we ate our chocolate and mango pancakes we decided to look for sisha in the Arabic part of the city. To save money we took a bus. The walk to the bus stop took us 1 and half hours since we decided to walk throgh every possible local market. Didn't see a single tourist or white man anywhere. So authetic!
We had found our bus stop and sat in the bus for several stops until the codriver told us to jump out. We weren't anywhere near but decided to walk the last 2 kilometers. And that seemed like a good choice. We stumbled into a local shopping mall and had our lunch there for under 3 euros for the both of us! And got a hat for me and a tie for Arno.
In the Arabic part of the city we finally found our hookah place. Hookah has been banned in Bangkok since the teens have been smoking drugs mixed in it. So it was super undergorund with sheets pulled over the cafeteria windows. There we sat and tried to deal with some things like calling to realtors for a new apartment and stuff. Then we headed back with a boat. The water transit is the best way to get around in the city. You have a nice breeze going on there, it's easy, you can't miss a stop really and definitely don't get stuck in traffic jams. Plus it cost like 12-14 bath witch is approx 30 cents.
In the evening we just wanted to take it easy before Arno's suit fitting (yeees we ended up ordering a tailor made suite and shirt for him for his cousin's wedding with 120 euros). And as we were sitting there I kind of found a niiiice dress for myself and after thinking it through with our tailor and looking for the right material we decided to go for it for approx 89 euros. I needed one long one for all the upcoming weddings too. I hope it will be pretty. Will pick them up when we return to Bangkok on our way home.
So yeah! Tomorrow will be an early morning since we are flying to Myanmar! A new country to our list!
'til then,
Linnea
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