Thailand or Bust (Day 3)

May 24th (Sunday)
Temperature High: 98 degrees

ERIC AND AUDREY GOT THEIR BAGS THIS MORNING! That was a huge deal cause as you can imagine, it set a great start to the day.

Sunday morning we headed out to find breakfast and try and figure out the public transportation to Chatuchak Weekend Market. On our way to the Skytrain, we stopped at The Landmark Hotel bakery for breakfast.

They recommended getting to the market early because of crowds and the heat so we got there as soon as we could figure it out. It actually wasn't that bad and we had a great time screwing around on the Skytrain.

The market was a lot of fun. We got lost for hours! There were all kinds of unique items to look through and everything was really cheap. Everything except the one thing Jed was hoping to stock up on, shoes. We looked but nothing really jumped out at him so we ended up doing more window shopping and getting odds and ends. Jed and Eric purchased some fun shirts, Audrey and I had to hold ourselves back on only get a few tank tops and Jed and Audrey were able to find some great sunglasses for there time in Thailand. They even have pets there that you could buy! On our way back we had to stop for our first street vendor, FRUIT! It was definitely a successful trip.

 As we were walking around the market, we continued to see this t-shirt with a model with her middle finger up. It was driving Eric crazy to know who the model was so he went to ask one of the gentlemen that was selling the shirt. With the language barrier, the guys misunderstood what Eric asked and responded to Eric, "It means F*CK YOU". Thanks, guy.

As we were leaving, we realized they recommended coming early. Not only was it starting to get super hot, but the lines to get out of the Skytrain and the walk over to the market, we jam packed full of people. We decided to get out of the heat and go find lunch over by our hotel.

 While we waited for the skytrain to get into the station, Jed decided that it would be fun it to do the voice over for the commercials that were playing on all the screens. The commercials were funny without voice over but Jed took it to the next level and had us in tears!

We found a place called Bharani in our Lonely Planet book that was just down the street from our hotel so we headed out on foot after a quick pit stop at the hotel to get our new rooms at Kingston Suites. (And in case you were curious, the rooms were not equitable, Kingston Suites was way nicer then at Royal President Hotel.)

Bangkok didn't seem to be too difficult to navigate, that is until we tried to find the restaurant. We walked around in circles for probably about an hour. As we walked by the same massage places over and over again, the ladies continued to try and called all of us into their salons, they even went as far has slapping Eric's butt. Right before we gave up and just ate at a random place we found it!

Bharani did not disappoint. It was absolutely amazing food and we had the best time.

After lunch we headed towards Lumphini Park to check it all out. In a weird way, the park felt a lot like Central Park in NYC. It was a park green park with a lake, playgrounds, and a ton of people. I think the most surprising thing to see in the park was all of the people we saw working out & running for exercise. Of course, that would make sense but it was super hot and people were working out in jeans and dress clothes. It was so funny to see. They even had an area similar to Muscle Beach in Venice where people were doing weight lifting and loving all of the attention. We were even cat called as we walked by. So funny!

The wildest thing that happened while we were there was as we were walking around we realized that everyone was standing up and not moving. Then we realized they had speakers all over the park and they were playing what we can only assume was some kind of National Anthem. It was so interesting to see how everyone just stopped everything they were doing to stand at attention.

It was time to move on from the park so we hopped on the metro to head towards Chinatown. As we got off the metro, we accidentally ran into Wat Traimit (known for the Golden Buddha).

By the time we figured out where we were and what the temple was we were too late to get into the temple so we took a few pictures and moved on.

Chinatown was exactly what you would think it would be. It was fantastic. All of the sights, sounds and smells were great and it was so much fun to just explore.

We had hoped to eat at a particular street food vendor but after looking and looking decided that it must not be there anymore and we decided on a random restaurant along the main street.

The food was good and it was a really fun experience. It was one more time where we were pretty much surrounded by locals and we felt like we got the real deal Chinese food.

After dinner, we still weren't interested in calling it a night so we went to check out the Flower Market (aka Pak Khlong Talat). This place was really cool.

The flowers were in abundance and so pretty. It was fun to walk around smell the flowers and try and find good photo opportunities.

When we were at the market, we tried a new form of public transportation, a tuk tuk.

This was so exciting and enjoyable. It is a fun way to get around the city and surprisingly cheap. It was a great way to end our evening.

Thailand Or Bust (Day 2)

May 22 & 23 (Friday & Saturday)

Tim was nice enough to take us to the airport crazy, early in the morning. It wasn't long before we met up with Eric & Audrey and got on our way to start our long flight to Hong Kong.

The 14 hour flight was pretty uneventful. We watched movies, slept, flew over the international date line and just enjoyed the downtime getting ready for all kinds of adventures ahead of up.

Much to our surprise, our first adventure happened as soon as we landed in Hong Kong. We got into Hong Kong a little later then expected and we were on the back of the plane. As soon as we got off the plane we had to move quickly to find our connecting flight. What we had forgotten was that we had to go through security again to get to our gate. Thankfully, as soon as we got through the security check our gate was right there. The bad part was that they we making last call for our flight so we had to run to get on before they closed the doors.

We were very excited and relieved that we make our connection but had to laugh that we ran to make the flight and immediately had to wait on the tarmac for 2 hours. We were all hopefully that when we got to Bangkok, Eric & Audrey's luggage was able to make it on our plane during our delay. It was not surprising but very disappointing when we realized it didn't make it.

After jumping through all the hoops to report missing luggage, we were able to find our transportation to our hotel. By the time we were driving into Bangkok, it was Saturday night. We were hoping to make it to the flashlight market once we checked into our hotel.

We should have known (we kind of did) we were in trouble when our driver had to stop and ask for directions to get to our hotel, Kingston Suites. It didn't give us a lot of confidence but we went with it cause, we really had no other choice. Thankfully, they were able to find the hotel and dropped us off. She let us know a great place to grab a bite to eat once we got settled and they were on our way.

As we checked in, we quickly learned that our reservations were not correct and they only had one room for us. At this point, we really just had to laugh at the ridiculousness of the few hours and we tried to wait patiently as they tried to figure it all out. In the end, out hotel was booked and they sent up to a hotel down the street. I am sure you had to be there, but it was quite hilarious when Eric asked the lady, "Is the room equitable?" It was hilarious to all of us because we are not sure she understood much English and here is Eric, using big words. With no real answer to Eric's question (understandably) and no other options, we headed down the street to our new hotel for the night.

We were determined to not end our night on a negative and since all the hotel hiccups cause us to miss the flashlight market, we decided to just go walking around our area and grab a bit to eat.

It must have been at least 10 or 11pm (if not later) by the time we headed out but you would never know it from all of the people and traffic.

 The sights, sounds and smells our first night were a bit surprising. There were a ton of night market stands for blocks so it was fun to see all the things for sale. A few of the tables were quite shocking. Many of the tables were full of different sex toys and enhancements. We also saw lady boys and a lot of ladies of the night. Not much was said about it at the time, we just walked around and took it all in. We never felt unsafe and no one approached us in any way so we kept walking.

 After a while, we finally found the grocery store that our guide told us about before she dropped us off. It had a restaurant inside the grocery store and that was a good place to get our first meal in Thailand. It was also a great chance to get a few things from the grocery store. Win-win.

Eric wasn't ready for thai food out of a grocery store so he stuck with the McDonald's on the corner. This pit stop lead to the next great comment from Eric. When asked how his cheeseburgers were his response was, "good...actually, I think they are better then back home."

 The pad thai was great and we were excited to get back to the hotel to really dig into it and call it a night. That was when we saw the most surprising thing on our way back. Once we left the grocery store/restaurant, we saw a lady in a tight white dress. Then we noticed a guy grabbing her butt and "checking out the goods" to see if he was interested. It was crazy to see it all happen and it wasn't like we were walking down some deserted alley way, it all happened right out in the open. It was crazy!

We knew that this was going to be a memorable trip and we couldn't wait to explore the city tomorrow.

Thailand or Bust (Day 1)

May 21st (Thursday)

The back story:
When Jed & I were in Cape Town, we thought it would be fun to plan another trip with Eric, Audrey, David and Amy. So Jed and I sent them them all this photo.

We were very serious about vacationing in Brazil and thought it would be a great time to go with the World Cup being in Rio in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016. We hoped that prices would be low enough in 2015 to make the trip. So in the winter of 2014, we started trip researching. Everything was looking great and we had a lot of fun ideas of places to go and explore. We were good to go and Eric & Audrey were on board with us. So in January 2015, we went to book our flights and all the prices had almost doubled. We were back to square one.

After a few skype conversations and a few days of researching different parts of the world, we landed on Thailand and we all couldn't be more excited.

So on May 21st, Jed and I hopped in the car and headed down to Raleigh to catch our flight to LA.

Since our flight to Bangkok didn't leave until Friday, we had Thursday night to hang out with Tim and Wendy. It couldn't have worked out more perfect since Tim had just taken a job in Massachusetts so this is was our only chance to hang out and catch up with them. We had the best time seeing their place in Culver City, see how things were going in LA and just laughing. talking and being silly.