The Bangkok Experience: Shopping, Eating & Soaking...

Okey dokey.... It's been WAY to long since my last blog post. I hope yall missed me :). I've started uncontrollably adding smiley faces to everything I type due to working with customers all the time, and constantly leaving them little :) :) :) even after firmly telling them off. So..... if there is an excessive number of smiley faces in this post, I'm sorry. I can't tell. I don't even think it's weird any more.

In the last 3 weeks, I travelled to two places! First, to the Perhentian Islands, located on the East Coast of Malaysia, with a bunch of AIESECers for a mini vacay. We left KL on an overnight bus on Thursday and came back on an overnight bus on Sunday (which was an "adventure"/scene out of my worst nightmare), after which I went home, napped for 2 hours, showered, and went straight into work. I AM HARD CORE FRIENDS. So. hard. core.

More recently (about two weeks ago now), I went on a lovely 5 day trip to visit my roommate from first year, the lovely Chollawan, who is currently living in Bangkok. And, this is what I'm going to write about in today's edition of my bloggity blog blog.

First, I have to say that Bangkok is an incredible! There is so much culture, so much to do and see, such good food and SO.MUCH.SHOPPING. In the 4 full days I spent in Bangkok, Chollawan took me all around the city to get the full Thai experience.

So Bangkok is located in kinda mid-way up Thailand (and Thailand borders Malaysia to its south). Bangkok is in a really safe area of Thailand but right by the Malay-Thai border is a civil war going on in Thailand were many people die every day. Even though it is not even something I think about in my daily life while living in Malaysia, or even all that often while in Bangkok, this is constantly being talked about on the news in Thailand. It's weird that a civil war is occurring so close to me and since I don't follow any Asian media channels regularly, the war does not even cross my mind on most days (FYI there is also a war going on in Malaysia in Borneo with the Phillipeans...).


So I flew into Bangkok on Friday, the day before the Thai new year called "Songkran". Chollawan met me at the airport and my first "Bangkokian" moment came when we entered the parking lot to get in the car and a line of cars were parked DIRECTLY in front of the car, literally perpendicular to our car, making it impossible to get out of the spot. As I started to question in my head what the heck we were going to do, Chollawan's brother started rolling the cars out of the way (physically pushing them all down) until our car was free to leave the spot.

This brought up a number of questions in my head.
1. If I left my car in one spot in a parking lot, does this mean that I could come back and someone could have potentially rolled it away to somewhere else?
2. What if I was an old lady and someone did this to me? How would I ever get out of my spot?

But Chollawan and her brother causally got into the car and pulled out of the spot, as I sat in the backseat, completely shocked, but also very amused with the fact that it's cool for stuff like this to happen in Bangkok, mostly because there just aren't enough parking spots (or streets....) for all the cars in Bangkok! Another crowded Asian city. Ty-pi-cal.

So my first full day in Bangkok led Chollawan and I to Kao San Road to celebrate the festival of Songkran. This was Chollawan's first "public" Songkran, meaning, when she was younger and living in Bangkok, call Songkran festivities would take place at home in her relatives backyard. Now basically, these festivities = the world's LARGEST WATER GUN FIGHT. Basically, all the roads are lined with people selling water guns and ice cold water for you to fill your guns with and spray at other people! Everyone is walking down the street and spraying each other, with absolutely no mercy. Other people are walking around with a mixture of water and clay and smearing white clay all over your face and clothing. The people selling food are spraying water, young childern are standing on big coolers or flipped over garbage cans and spraying you, EVERYONE IS SPRAYING YOU. Even when your eating, even when your saying "STOP STOP STOP STOP". It is actually totally crazy and fun and kinda refreshing in the Bangkok sun and heat. For me and Chollawan, Songkran was just an ever present background factor, as we tried to explore the various sights of Bangkok while trying to avoid getting splashed with water and smeared with clay.

As the day went on we left Kao San Road to visit Bangkok's capitol altar (where there is a State Buddha, and many people who practice Theravada Buddhism go there to pray for the new year). Unfortunately, pics from the altar and then the Palace (where the King and Queen of Thailand used to live...the King now lives in the hospital :-S) are stuck on my camera. Still. As we walked around the Buddha, got our fortunes for the year (my second new year celebration and my second fortune!! woot!) and walked past the palace, we still continued to be sprayed with water when we least expected it.

Chollawan then took me to a beautiful temple located across one of the rivers in Bangkok, called Wat Arun (which means Temple of Dawn). Here are some pics of the temple, the steeeeeeeeeeep and scary steps we had to climb to get to the top, and the beautiful carvings all over.

View from the top of the steps

View from the bottom of the steps (What we climbed down)

On our way and after our trip to the temple we look a lot of short breaks along the way... for me to do things like shop on the side of the road for pendants of Buddhas (made in Buddhist temples all across Thailand)

and to take lots of pictures of children playing with water for Songkran:

I got flashed by a Ladyboy shortly after taking this picture...-_______-

and visit the temple that Chollawan studies Theravada Buddhism at on the weekends. Her studying will last for 8 years and when she finally completes the different levels (And writes exams on all the teachings of the Buddha), then she can teach classes too :) !!! In the picture below, notice Chollawan's wet shirt, covered in white patches of clay (We were attacked on the way here).

Chollawan at her Buddhist Temple

By the time it was almost late evening, we needed to catch a bus home. We found one with no AC (which was okay - it had open windows and we were soaking wet anyways) and got on and the bus started to move. The shitty thing about the open windows is that as we drove down the street, people litterally AIMED their hoses into our bus and sprayed all the passengers and bus drivers as we drove back out to Chollawan's home (about 20 mins from the city center). Let me tell you, after a full day of being soaked, none of us on the bus were pleased to have a man with a fire hose soak the ENTIRE BUS as it paused in the traffic!!!!!!

Soaked and not so happy Bus passengers

soaked, but always happy, Chollawan

 The thing about Songkran is that even though the new year is only suppose to be 1 day, the festival and water spraying goes on for three entire days. Furthermore, you would think that the water fighting would taper off over the course of those three days, but THEY GOT MORE INTENSE where on the third day, tons and tons of pick up trucks were driving around the city carrying children and teenagers in the back with huge tubs of water. These kids would fill their guns of water and spray each other from the moving pick-up trucks. It was madness but totally hilarious. All I can say is that the Thai people really know how to have a goooooood time. It also made me feel like a kid again. I bought myself an angry bird water gun (While in Asia, do as the Asians do right?) and tried to fight the people with super-soakers, using my dumb-ass puny piece of crap.

Our sight-seeing was interrupted by the yummiest thai food:

yummmmmy green curry

Not just your thai express pad thai

visits to markets.... people will tell you that Bangkok as amazing shopping. I am hear to tell you that Bangkok as UNREAL SHOPPING. SO MUCH STUFF. SO CHEAP. SO NICE. It's like so overwhelming that intense paradox of choice kicks in and in my case, I left with next to nothing and can not wait to go back and pick up all the things I decided not to get cuz I just HAD to see what was in the next shop.

Don't get me wrong - came away with some great purchases like some beautiful Thai fabric, jewlery, skirts, shirts ......(okay lots of things).... but I need to go back and get more!

We visited places like Siam Square (where apparently the shopping comes alive at night):

And Chatuchak weekend market where they sell everything from pets, to clothes to furniture, all open air. All this while, I am still running away from people trying to splash me with ice cold water AS I SHOP.

Chatuchak Market at Sunset

and the beginnings of a crazy ass storm which followed that beautiful sunset

Other highlights of my trip included getting a REAL THAI MASSAGE (which is like such a big thing over in Thailand. Everyone gets massages). After our massage was over, Chollawan told me that my thai masseuse was talking to her in Thai, telling her that I was really really tense (lol), and visiting the floating market which was a really cool experience - about 1.5 hours outside of Bangkok:

So, I just want to give a HUGE THANK YOU, to my beautiful roomie, Chollawan, (and to her family) for such a wonderful trip! Thank you for taking me to so many places and letting me experience Bangkok to the fullest! All I can say is that I am so lucky to have a Thai roomie whose time living in Asia OVERLAPS with mine :)

Chollawan, me and her mum out for some SERIOUSLY yummy thai food

Bangkok, I like you :)