Khao San fun
Trip Start
Dec 05, 2010
1
20
34
Trip End
Dec 15, 2011
Bangkok, Thailand
Monday, June 6, 2011
We arrived in the heat of bangkok for a few days to sort out our Chinese visa and get a bit settled. It was my first time to Bangkok and the infamous Khao San Road, but it was a big trip down memory lane for Pat! We spent the first half an hour wandering around trying to find the guesthouse that Pat stayed at 6 years ago, only to realize that our standards have changed quite a bit. Pat would like to point the finger at me I'm sure, but he also wasn't jumping at the chance to stay there again!
Bangkok was a lot more relaxed than I had imagined (especially when compared to the aggressive vendors in Bali). The delicious food definitely helped... oh how we love red curry and tom yum soup. Pat also tried something new - a scorpion. Not to worry, they removed the head and poisonous bit before giving it to him, as well as spraying it with some flavour which really only helped for a minute. I think it took him 2 or 3 minutes to actually swallow it all!
We stopped for a day in Ayutthaya, which was the former capital of Thailand before the Burmese destroyed it. It is a beautiful city with a huge park in the middle and temples all around it. We rented a bike and cruised around for the day checking out most of the sights before taking the night train to Chiang Mai.
In Chiang Mai we weren't that interested in the usual elephant trekking/bamboo rafting so we tried something new and went zip-lining for the day. We had so much fun pretending to be superman!
There are many more places in Thailand we could have easily visited, but we wanted to get to Laos and we didn't really want to repeat everything Pat had done already. So we made our way to Chiang Khong at the Laos/Thai border, staying in a quaint guesthouse overlooking the Mekong for $5 (I love Asia).
