Bangkok Review!

I know, I know, I’ve been back in Manila for almost a week but I’ve been exhausted, a bit sick, and we had some stressful times here too…  But now I’m ready to finally talk about my trip!  I still have a LOT of pictures to sort through (they must all be posted on facebook, no?), but I’ll get there!

First stop:  Bangkok!  I already posted some different pictures here, so feel free to check them out.

Bangkok is a great city, it reminded me a lot of Manila but better (apologies to my Pinoy friends, but that’s true…).  Food was cheaper than here, there were markets everywhere with clothing and cool home decor (like wood-carved elephants!), all with great-great prices (again cheaper than my beloved Greenhills), there was a lot of traffic, but it was never the bottleneck that we see in Manila.

The bad:  metered taxis were cheap, but they kept trying to screw with us, by giving a set price (as much as 5x the metered price), by charging per person, etc.  We always refused to accept this, even when the set price was relatively cheap between the four of us, because it’s tourists being ok with it that ruins for all the other tourists/expats.  If you’re patient, you can find a metered cab with no issues (right next to tourist spots is where they try the most to mess with you).

The other bad experience we had was that the supposedly “four star” hotel we stayed in was crap.  (I will be posting a travel review with all the details of what we did + costs.)

We saw all the major sights but by the time we left Bangkok 5 days later, we were all tired of seeing so many temples and Buddhas.  For non-Buddhist like us, it all starts looking the same after a while, even when all the temples are impressive with incredible details.

See my fancy skirt?  If you’re off to look at temples in Thailand, make sure to cover your shoulders, wear pants or a long skirt, or you’ll be stuck buying something off the outside market to prance around in.

I wasn’t the only one who looked ridiculous, no worries!

Bangkok was a really fun city and the food was delicious!  I shopped way more than I expected there (good thing I brought an empty small suitcase!).  I came home with new clothes, new pillowcases (with elephants, of course!), new things for the wall…

We even splurged on a fish spa, something I hadn’t done since we first arrived in Manila, we think it’s fun, and my parents were curious to try it!  They’re everywhere in Khao San Road, so we had to try it!

5 days was plenty in Bangkok – we were able to hit all the sights, do a day trip to Ayutthaya (which I’ll be posting about tomorrow), and even had a “free day” with nothing on our itinerary.  By the weekend, I was eager to arrive in Chiang Mai and do what I was most looking forward to:  spending a day with elephants!