Bangkok!

Hello everyone,

So, here my first travel report! Already a lot to tell although I'm just a few days in Bangkok.

First, my flight to Abu Dhabi was already a great experience, never traveled in such a hugh and comfortable airplane. We landed at Abu Dhabi by sunrise, and it was a lovely sight. By the time that I went out of the airport in Bangkok it was already dark outside, I reached my hostel; NapPark @ Khao San Road by train and taxi. It's in the very city centre near all the important sights. The first day I spend with girls from Canada, we only visited the Khao San road the whole day, but I was totally fine with that for I had to adapt a bit to the time difference between Europe and Asia. At the Khao San road, there is a lot of stuff to buy and experience, from clothes, bags, dreadlocks, tattoos, all kinds of food and drinks (including scorpions and grasshoppers) to ping pong shows. I bought one nice long flappy pants to visit temples with. Your shoulders and knees should be covered and shoes should be taken off if you enter a temple. So that was what I did the next day.

Together with Janina from Germany, I visited the Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kaew and Wat Pho. It's very touristic but I think it's very worth it if you're in Bangkok for the first time. The details in the buildings are just overwhelming and you're blown away by the amount of gold that's used. For the fact that I love taking pictures, I couldn't stop taking them, but sometimes you just have to put the camera down and enjoy the beauty of the place. It's also nice to watch Buddhists practice their rituals in the temples, but for them it must be a disturbing that there are so many tourists around ...

After this incredible visit, Janina and I had a blowl of noodle soup with vegetables, pork meet and fish for just 40 bath, which is not even 1 euro, at a local restaurant on the side of the street. The food here is so tasty and so cheap...! Janina had to leave for an appointment and I went to the Siam museum that tells about the history of Thailand. A small Thai girl accompanied me all the way to the museum, we just smiled at eachother because we couldn't understand eachother unfortunately. She was so cute! The museum was very interesting because of the interactive character of the exhibition. Then, I waited for the sun to set, because I wanted to take a picture of Wat Arun at sunset. The pier where I wanted to take the picture from was at the end of a street where just Thai lived, but they allowed me to take some pictures from the pier : ))

That night I met Sanne from The Netherlands and Steffi from Germany. We had dinner together and then we decided, together with Janina, to go to the floating market in Damnoen Saduak, south west of Bangkok; a girls day out! The nicest part of the trip was on the way to the floating market that we made by long tale boat, every time another boat passed, the water almost came in our boat and we went quite fast, exciting experience! So at the floating market, we stepped into a peddled boat to watch the things they had to offer us. Again, we ate some nice Thai noodle soup and we bought some fruits and small, sweet pancakes made of coconut.

In the afternoon we went to the Chatuchak weekend market. We went there by tuk tuk. A tuk tuk ride always guarantees a bumpy ride, a real Azian feeling and some screems on the way. The traffic here is crazy, but it's so nice to see that everything goes well (as far as I experience upto now) and to watch the sight of people passing by, 3 people on a motorbike, other tuk tuks trying to get through and motorbikes crowding together for a red traffic light. At Chatuchak, you can litteraly buy everything, accept for cars ; )) Even puppies, cats, rabbits, chicken, parrots, squirrel, hedgehogs, fish ...etc. at the moment that we became a bit tired, after this long day, we decided to go back to the hostel and relax for a bit. So I relaxed a bit by writing you ;) .

Tomorrow we probably leave with the four of us to Kanchanaburi, this city is famous for the bridge over the river Kwai. A lot of people died while constructing this bridge that links Myanmar (former Birma) to Thailand, so it's also called the dead railway. Besides that, we want to visit Erawan National Park. This park has some nice waterfalls with several terasses where you can even swim in and jump from. Looking forward to it : ))

So, now my last dinner in Bangkok for now, but I'll returnbefore I fly back, because there is still a lot that I want to visit here.

Hope you enjoyed my report !

Uploading pictures here is almost impossible, so if you want to check out pictures, click on this dropbox link:


https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ejpwmguunb7idv0/t15lotHqD9

Liefs, Danouck.