The flight to Bangkok was a short one and it was a very uneventful.  I was struggling on what hotel I wanted to book and Alex was telling me to book in the Bahn 89 hostel which he said was decent.  Didn’t require much convincing to book into a hostel where you already knew someone.  I took a Grab (Asia’s Uber) from the airport to the hostel which took FOREVER.  The airport is a decent distance from the airport but the traffic was also terrible.  I finally go to the hostel after more than an hour and was pretty hungry when I arrived.  So I went off on a search for street food.  Luckily there was an entire street of very local thai food.  None of the restaurants had english menus and I ended up just pointing at stuff or asking them to give me their favorite.  All of the food that came out ended up being delicious and pretty cheap, so I was content!

Once I got back from eating the food, the gang told me they were headed to a bar on the tourist bar street and so I headed there to meet up with my Chiang Mai crew!  This place was famous for their cheap buckets of alcohol and despite my typical aversion to alcohol in order to stick with beer, I made an exception this night and ordered a bucket.

That led to another bucket and eventually a walk down the street which culminated in the famous Bangkok ping pong show.  If you do not know what a ping pong show is, I would suggest that you look it up yourself as I am not going to outline it here.  The tourist street had people hawking anything you could imagine and one of those things was bracelets with the most ridiculous things on them.  Just look at the photo and you will know what I mean.

They would even make you custom ones, so of course I got a mini sign which will be helpful when my sign is not easy to bring along.

This was the sketchy ally and the taxi driver that took us to the ping pong show.  Another comment of note is that the one girl we were with did not have enough cash to pay for the entrance and so i fronted the cash saying she could pay me tomorrow.  I thought she was part of our crew and was staying at our hostel, I just hadn’t met her yet but it turns out we picked her up at the bar and I had no contact information for her.  I asked around the next day to see if anyone else knew her but no dice.  So i was really nice and paid for a girls enjoyment of one of Bangkok’s most famous entertainment mediums.  IT wasn’t that much so I guess i just hope she enjoyed it.

The next day the crew from our hostel was trying to figure out what to do and we had heard of a weekend market that was massive, so we opted to check it out.  I think we started out with a crew of 9 but eventually split up into our own sub groups depending on what each of us wanted to do.

I joined the I don’t care to buy anything except walk around crew which I think most people selected over the go shopping for clothes and stuff crew.

I was a little disappointed by the food options at the market as I was hoping to get to try some weird things.  Closest I came was squid eggs, which were a bit fishy but still very delicious.

There were a few restaurant tents which had basic Thai food and since we were pretty hungry, I guess we should probably eat.  We each got a dish of choice and a beer and were on our merry way.

I would like to think that each of us in the group were enablers when it came to drinking because after the first beer at lunch, we continued to get market beers and then 7 eleven beers for the rest of the day.

After the market, the group decided to split up once more as one group was going back to the hostel and one group was going to the mall.  I was the ring leader of the mall group as it was a short subway away and it promised to have a pinball machine, which I had not played in several weeks.

As we made our way to several destinations we decided that we were going to have a 7 eleven drinking day.  We started at the market and then continued as we made our way to the mall.  Apparently Thailand has a law where you cannot buy alcohol before a certain time and after a certain time.  I think it was either 2:58 or 3:58  when we attempted to buy our first 7 eleven beer and we were told we had to wait 2 minutes before purchasing it.   We waited and then were off to the races.

We slowly made our way to the mall after stops at Zara and several 7 eleven stores.  Eventually we made it to the mall and by the time we got there it was dinner time and it was time to see what was available.  Alex had been to the mall the day before and mentioned that food was on the upper floors, so we went exploring for some food.  We eventually ended up choosing a steak place, that looked decently priced for what you got and pretty appetizing.  The portions were a bit small but the food was good and we were all feeling a lot better after eating.

After food, it was time to go the THE ARCADE.  I love arcades and hadn’t been to one in a very long time.  This one was supposed to have pinball and various rhythm games, which means there is a potential for DDR as well.  We arrived at the arcade and there it was,  An ACDC pinbal machine in all of her glory.  The machine had seen better days and was missing the rubber piece on the flipper, but other than that worked out ok.

Leah, Alex and Ewan had not really played pinball before, so it took them a while to get the hang of it.  My first game was not ideal, but I did pretty well on the second game and ended up getting the second overall score for the machine.  Pinball obviously is not a thing in Thailand so I guess the machine doesn’t get much action which means the GC is pretty low.

After playing a few games of pinball we moved on to the DDR MACHINE!  I love DDR and this one had no fail turned on and a surprising number of North American songs.  Leah and I played through 3 songs and then we realized how late it had gotten and decided we should probably head back to the hostel as the rest of the group was waiting for us to eat.

We jumped in a tuk tuk and headed back to the hostel.  This turned into a pretty fun ride as for some reason on one of the main streets there were a few other tuk tuks with foreigners in the that appeared to be racing us.  Whether they were racing or not, we encouraged our driver to win and so he stepped on it and we ended up the winner of the tuk tuk race.  It was a lot of fun at the time and is probably one of those things where you had to be there, but it was awesome.

After returning to the Hostel we headed to Khaosan road and grabbed some street food and some drinks.

 

We met a guy on the street that had bought a bottle of whiskey and couldn’t finish it, so we had to help out.  We ended up running into this same guy a few times throughout the next few days.  He was pretty funny.

The next day I gt up for a run and decided to see where the Imperial palace was as we were planning on heading there later in the morning.  I scoped out the palace and dodged hundreds of Chinese tourists.  It was a great morning.

After the run, the rest of the crew was awake and ready to go, so we headed back to the imperial palace to check it out. It was about $16 USD for entry into the imperial palace.  We walked around for a long time admiring the details included in every inch of the place.  There were little squares of shiny glass glued into the wall in elaborate patterns and they were all so clean.

One of the main buildings is the temple of the emerald Buddha, which is one of the most important temples in Thailand.  People come from all over the country to pay homage here.  We went in for several minutes of quiet reflection.  The “clothes” of the Buddha are changed four times a year as the seasons change.  There were also a few statues on the outside of the temple which people were pouring water on in a spiritual gesture.

We explored the various artwork and temples in the complex then decided to head to the giant reclining Buddha which was housed just around the corner.  We arrived and the Buddha was huge.  They had to build the building around the Buddha because it was so big.  We admired the Budha and I got my mom I’m ok photo for the day.  After the reclining Budha we had been walking around for a long time and so decided to go back to the hostel for a rest.

I decided to venture out on my own to check out a few breweries and craft beer places in the area.  Our general plan was to meet up in China Town later for food.  The first stop was called Udomsuk brewing, but it was located inside a pacific islands themed restaurant.  I had a loaded fries which sounded like it would be kind of like Poutine, but it ended up using Nacho cheese which I am not really a huge fan of.  It was still a nice snack and the beer was pretty decent.

After trying a few of their offerings, I headed down the street to the next beer bar called Let the Boy Die.  This was actually a great spot.  I chatted with the head bartender for a while about the Thai beer scene and learned a lot about the state of the industry as well as more info about their brewing law.  Sounds like for the forseeable future craft brewers will need to brew elsewhere and import their beer into Thailand, which probably means even more expensive craft beer vs the current big beer offerings.  They had several beers to offer from many local Bangkok brewers.  He gave me a few suggestions and I ended up with an IPA and an Amber Ale from “the Sloths” and “Golden Coins “ brewing.

After enjoying the amazing craft brews I walked on down to China Town to meet the boys.  We ate at a Thai noodle place and then I went on a search for dumplings.

This posed more difficult than I anticipated but I eventually found decent dumplings and was then content and happy to move on to the rest of the evening.  But first I also decided I wanted to try Durrien for the first time because you hear a lot about it’s terrible smell but I have never tried it.  I negotiated down a pre packaged already cut durrien fruit and gave it a try.  It wasn’t that bad, but it also wasn’t amazing so I am not 100% sure why people put up with the smell to eat it.

I guess there are certain people that once they find something they like, they stick with it and Khaosan road and a bar called Oxxies was Alex and Ewan’s go to place.  We headed back there, walked around then headed back to the hostel to chill.  WE played cards and generally had a great time.

The next day was my last full day in Bangkok and we had spent a decent ammount of time in the city and wanted to leave.  We researched the floating markets and the real ones were all weekends only but when we asked out hostel person she said that there was of course a floating market open.  We had also heard about the train market where the train runs right through the center and so we went to a travel agent to see how much the transportation to these places would cost.  We ended up negotiating a price to go to both the floating market and the train market which would take basically all day for a very reasonable price.  We agreed and were headed about an hour outside of the city.  Ewan decided to stay home so it was just Marla, Leah, Alex and I.

We arrived at the “Floating Market” and something felt very off.  It was far away from where the map said the market was and they sat us down at a table to explain how things worked,  They wanted to charge an outrageous ammount for a motorboat to take us down the canals nearby and eventually get to the floating market. We rejected this idea and I asked our driver to take us directly to the market.  He obliged and we headed over to the market directly.  We quickly realized that this was a tourist only market and it was open every day because it was specifically for tourists and the real markets were only open on the weekends.  It gave a pretty good representation of what a floating market was, but all of the items were really expensive and very souvenir focused.

 

We hired a row boat for 1 hour because a row boat was cheaper and I negotiated 1 hour for the same price as 30 minutes and we headed off on the water.  A floating market is basically a market where people pull up on their boats to buy things.

So vendors are either on other boats or they are facing the water so people can pull up on their boats and see what wares are being sold.  It was pretty cool and despite being aimed at tourists, I just didn’t buy anything.  Actually that’s a lie.  Erin Matheson you can have a prize if you read this and message me with the password Kilo.  I would also like to stay on your couch in July when I pass through Calgary.

After the floating market we headed about 30 minutes down the road to the train market.  This is a normal local market where people are selling fish, meats and fresh fruits and veggies but with a twist.  There are train tracks running through the middle of it and 8 times per day a train comes rolling through.  All of the vendors have retractable awnings and some have drawers that move out of the way.

But most have produce on the ground which the train passes safely over top of.  We watched the train roll through once, tried some strange fruit that looked kind of between a pepper and a pear (still not sure what it is called) and tried to find some street food and ended up at a cafe which served kinda Thai western food.  We met back up with our driver and were on our way back to Bangkok.

I was leaving the next day and I had reached my 7 days before a marathon milestone, which means I don’t drink for 7 days prior to a marathon.  The many factors including not drinking and an exceptionally early flight the next day, I decided to skip the night time activities and pack it in early.  That also meant I had to say goodbye to the crew I had been hanging out with for the previous few days.  I have met a lot of people in my travels but this group was one of those groups where everyone just jived with one another and we all were on the same page about most things.  I was sad to say goodbye, but I knew I needed to get to Boston to finally run the race I had been getting up at 6:30am every day for.

And with that my bonus trip to Thailand was over and my 2 months in Asia had come to a close.  It was time to head back to North America for about a week to freaking run the BOSTON MARATHON!!!!