Here in Thailand

Hello from the steaming 40 degree Thailand to North America experiencing the snowstorm of the year. The news was showing that most of the Canada was receiving over 30cm of snow which would be a lot of fun.  We are currently in Phuket after spending 3 days in Bangkok. It is 40 degrees here and very humid. Great weather to hit the beach!


We flew from Sydney, Australia to Bangkok, Thailand on January 17th. It was a 8 hr flight and we made the right choice to fly with Emirates Air.

A quick note on flying with Emirates. It is an airline based out of Dubai that flies around the world and it really markets the quality of the experience of flying with them compared to most of the North American airlines that are no frills, cheap, Greyhound bus experience in the air.  With Emirates they had amazing dinner for us with some of the best beef and shrimp we had ever had, over 1200 movies, TV and other shows to choose from which made the long flight much more tolerable. We also really enjoyed with the TV at each seat, one of the options on the TV was to see the view from the camera mounted on the front of the plane or the camera on the bottom of the plane. We could watch these cameras if we wanted from when we got on the plane to the end of the trip, seeing what the pilot would view during the flight or what we were flying over. It was a real great experience.

Arriving in Bangkok at our hotel was rather straight forward. Canadians do not need a visa. We were able to walk right to customs and pass through with our bags with little delay.  We were at our hotel within the hour in the eastern park of the city, near Khao San Road, which is the big tourist/backpacker area, and were looking forward to having our own hotel room for the night, rather than sleeping in the 8 bed dorms we had become accustomed to in Australia.

We arrived at the hotel at 2am and slept until noon, and then decided to adventure out into the city.  The streets are very busy with lots of cars, people, merchants, dogs, cats, tourists, and it was so much fun. When we would  walk down the street the shops are packed together and merchants selling food, clothes, and everything you could think of were on the outside portion of the side walk going into the street in front of the stores, leaving enough space for 1.5 people to squeeze through.The smells on the street were a combination of incense, beef, flowers and East Hamilton steel mill.   The people were very friendly and did not ask questions to us about what they were selling unless we asked them first. Everything you could want to eat or buy was right there on the street over and over again which makes sense why the guidebook says its not a place for a recovering shopaholic.

The first day as we were exploring we walked down Khao San road which was the street were a lot of foreigners stay or go to when they are spending time in Bangkok. We decided we wanted to try some of the food from the street vendors as it looked safe, though we did stick to the noodles and veggie options at first.

The vendor had all of the noodles and ingredients we could choose from on the side of the grill, similar to a hot dog vendor setup, and we would point to what we wanted her to cook.  We had some excellent phad thai, (which is noodles, egg, bean sprouts and tofu) for the two of us for $2. It was fantastic considering the same meal in overpriced Australia would cost around $30 dollars and half the quality.

We continued our walk around the adjacent streets to Khao San Rd viewing the different shops and sites until we arrived at the pedicure and massage center we determined was perfect. Steve got a 1 hr Thai massage while Ang had a half hour massage and pedicure.

The Thai massage was different as person would use what we would consider traditional massage techniques, but the Thai portion was they used a lot of their feet and legs to massage the body. The person would use such techniques as standing on the persons back using their feet to apply pressure or pull back with the arms while pushing with the legs. It was fantastic and a real fun experience.

After the massages we wandered around some more, ate some dinner and went back to the hotel to read the guidebooks and figure out what were were going to do the next day as were were still a little tired from the long flight and early morning arrival. We had absolutely loved the first day in Bangkok and were looking forward to seeing a lot of the main sites of the city the next day.

(Oh, and by the way--for some reason blogspot has gone all thai....so we are looking at thai characters to try and post things--excuse us if anything screwed up!!)

TONS of traffic!  Cars, motorcycles, buses and these little tuk-tuks.  Seemed to be like organized chaos, cause  we didn't see any accidents or incidents even though there are so many drivers.

Typical street.  Shops on the bottom, houses on top.  Lots of signs everywhere.

This was one of the road side vendors we were talking about.  She was selling cold drinks (for about 25-50 cents each).  Next to her may have been someone making phad thai, then someone selling clothes--literally anything you want can be found on the street!

Lots of ornate statues.  Lots of arches and tributes to the King.  Very very beautiful!  This one was found in the middle of a traffic circle.

Ang enjoying a thai coke!

We are in the process of writing the other blogs about our time in Bangkok and now in Phuket.  But--we are going to take a break and head to the beach!!  Do promise more blogs tonight/tomorrow, so hold tight!!  Oh, and we are going to try and get some better pictures.  These towns are just so busy and colourful, its hard to really capture it in pictures--but we will do our best for you!!

Post soon!