Jun 1st, 2010
by Chris. |
So we have finished our journey and are adjusting back to “normal” life. We made a good decision to come back in time for Memorial Day weekend because we needed the extra time to sleep and get over our jet lag. We are glad to be back but we have to admit that we also have the feeling of a void. After two months of waking up to brand new adventure, sights, and foods everyday, you get addicted to it.
We will continue to post the blog entries from the remainder of our trip. In our last post, we were just leaving Bangkok. We still need to talk about our time in the Thai islands and beaches, our quick trip through Malaysia, and our final destination, Singapore. In addition, we have ideas for some “thematic” blog posts, other wacky story posts, and picture posts. So stay tuned…
Now comes the task of naming all of our photos… all 6,500 of them! Why? Well, we don’t want to look back at them years from now and ask, “Why the hell did we take a picture of this?”
Until next post
Posted in: Travel.
May 19th, 2010
by Chris. |
Bangkok, the city where you can get anything (and I mean “anything”), was a very interesting and hip city. It is the center of pop culture for Thailand. The city has about 6.3 million people so you don’t come here to see the “city”. You come here to see small parts of the sprawling city. Luckily, most of the tourist attractions are located near the central city. The city has a great public transportation system which includes buses, a subway, a light rail system, and a Skytrain system (elevated train tracks). Another really super transit option for us was the “metered taxi” (Wow, what a concept, huh!). In all the other cities and countries we visited here, there were taxis but you had to negotiate the price, never knowing if you are getting a fair price. So it was a relief to rely on a meter for the price of the ride.
With the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho
The Grand Palace complex is the requisite tourist site in Bangkok (they know it as well and charge children under 12 the same price as adults, about $11). It is a large site that encompasses both the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew where the Emerald Buddha is kept. Although the Grand Palace and Emerald Buddha was cool to experience, we really loved the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho. It is one of those wondrous sites that you see in pictures but don’t appreciate the magnitude of the place until you are there. At 152′ long and 50′ tall, it barely fits in the building.
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Posted in: Travel.
Tagged: ayuthaya · bangkok · Thailand · Travel · wat pho · wat phra kaew
May 15th, 2010
by Chris. |
I don’t know if many of you are keeping up with the situation in Thailand with the Red Shirt protesters and their clash with the government, but I wanted to let everyone know that we are safe and sound. We left Bangkok May 14th, at 9:20pm on a flight to Phuket, Thailand.
We had gotten to Bangkok on Wednesday, May 12th, at 9:00am after an overnight train from Chiang Mai. At this point, the protests had simmered down but the protesters were still encamped in the same area that they have been occupying since March. There had not been any violence for a while so we assumed our plans wouldn’t be affected. For one thing, the protests are happening in a very small area of the city. Bangkok has approximately 6.3 million people so think of it as basically Houston (times 3 though). The protests were not happening in the tourist parts of the city so tourists could keep clear of it.
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Posted in: Travel.
