temples | trying to travel light

First street food - green papaya salad - yummy and spicy!

After my flight was delayed leaving Sydney I ended up arriving in Bangkok in the early hours of the morning. Fortunately, getting a taxi wasn’t any hassle (or a rip-off) and I got to the Smile Society hostel ok (what a cute name for a hostel).

Rebecca also arrived without any trouble (and with a little help from a lovely Thai person) and it was so great to see a friendly and familiar face again. I was immediately laughing at all of Rebecca’s jokes and sarcastic comments and I could tell we were going to have a fun time in Thailand!

Coolest bag ever!

The same day we met Anoushka (from Jamaica) in the same dorm room and all headed out to the weekend market. Going shopping on the first day of the trip probably wasn’t the smartest idea but the market was a lot of fun! It was HUGE sold everything but mainly clothes and accessories for ridiculously cheap prices. I dived straight into eating some street food to test my stomach of steel and had a green papaya salad and vegetable spring rolls, later washed down with a fresh coconut – yum! For dessert we shared a typical roti, which is a pancake with egg and banana in the middle with condensed milk poured over the top – also yum!

First fresh coconut with Anoushka and Becky

After the market we found a little street bar and enjoyed some beers and good music (mainly Belle & Sebastian) and made friends with a Thai lady called Jenny and her friend Wai. To get out of the bar we had to climb over the market gates and then we went to the Saxophone Bar to see some live blues and jazz music. It was a pretty fun and crazy start to our trip and it was great to meet some lovely Thai people, even though Jenny told us not to trust Thai people every five minutes (s0 why we trusted her is anyone’s guess?!).

We spent the next few days in Bangkok visiting temples, the grand palace, the famous Kao San road, getting a foot massage, going to more markets and taking a cooking class.

Me and Becky spent half a day at May Kaidee Vegetarian Cooking School learning how to make various typical Thai dishes. First we went to the market to buy ingredients, to taste some street food and to see how the rice paper rolls are made. Our cooking teacher Ms Om was super enthusiastic and energetic so we had a lot of fun singing, dancing and taking photos while we were cooking and eating. The food was super delicious and I realised that the right, fresh ingredients are the key because the actual cooking part was quick and easy for each dish.

Miss On our cookery teacher

Cooking Thai food with Miss On

Me and Becky also went to Monk Bowl Village to see traditional alms bowls for the temples being made. These bowls are typically machine spun these days and only a few families in this neighbourhood in Bangkok are making them by hand. It was a treat to see the bowls being made but the families live in relative poverty, which is why the Bangkok municipality is trying to encourage tourists to visit this area and buy the handmade bowls. We bought a couple of bowls but not after much hilarity when I tried to explain that I needed to use a toilet to get my money to pay (my money was in my money belt under my dress, so I couldn’t get to it without lifting up my dress to waist height). They thought I needed to go to an ATM so a lady got some keys and indicated for me to hop on the back of the scooter with her (no helmet, of course) and it was only after we drove off and I asked again about the toilet that she realised the misunderstanding. Of course, everyone thought this was hilarious, me included, so we all had a good laugh and I got to use the toilet inside someone’s home.

We visited a various temples and the grand palace and I’ve never seen so much gold, gold leaf and gold paint in my entire life! At Wat Pho we made a donation and wrote a message on a tile that would be later placed on the new roof of the temple. We also saw loads of buddhas (mainly gold but also some emerald) and enjoyed the peace and quiet as we sat in the main temple spaces, which are all still active temples today.

The bar in the market

Our next stop was Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand so we decided to catch the overnight train. We managed to get beds in the second class sleeper carriage (no air-con but fans and windows that opened). It might have been the pale green interior but Becky decided that the train looked like a prison train and took the bottom bunk with the window and I got the top bunk. I’ve never taken a sleeper train before but this one was pretty cool, I thought. Miraculously the train left 5 minutes early but this gave us false hope because we arrived the next day in Chiang Mai about 3.5 hours later than schedule. It didn’t matter though because we passed the time enjoying the view as the train passed through lush green scenery and little towns.

You can see more photos on my Flickr page here.