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The Grand Palace in Bangkok is a testament to the Thais’ almost painful attention to detail. This is visual overload at its grandest. Sulit ang 400 THB entrance fee!
The Grand Palace in Bangkok
12 Thursday Jul 2012
Posted in Thailand
Category Archives: Thailand
The market beside the Grand Palace
08 Friday Jun 2012
Posted in Thailand
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Shopping is a very enjoyable experience in Bangkok; the city is basically one big shopping place, the goods are cheap, and Thai vendors are oh so willing to haggle. One market that really stood out for me is the market beside the Grand Palace. According to my extensive Googling, it is an amulet market. However, we found more than just amulets there. We found used shoes and phone chargers and old toys and a pile of eyeglasses and shades. Some of these things look like they’re just random items from the vendor’s home. Is this the Thai version of ukay-ukay?
To my friends who’ve been to Bangkok, what is this market? To my friends who will be going to Bangkok, what is this market? To random Googlers from Thailand, what is this market?
Khao San Road
04 Monday Jun 2012
Posted in Thailand
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Bangkok reminds me so much of Manila; the streets are small, the power lines are tangled webs, there are even gago cabbies and gago bus drivers. I’m even more paranoid than I usually am about crossing the road because of the left-hand traffic which disorients me, making me look towards the opposite direction of where the traffic is coming from.
We stayed in a nice hotel squished at the end of Khao San Road. A United Nations Convention takes place every night along this street.
The best restroom in Bangkok
24 Thursday May 2012
Posted in Thailand
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Yes, this restroom is so awesome it’s one good reason to visit The Jim Thompson House in Bangkok. Jim Thompson was an American who liked Thai silk so much. He also disappeared mysteriously and until now, no one knows what happened to him. You can read more about his life and disappearance on Wikipedia. What you can’t read on Wikipedia is how awesome this restroom is.
This ain’t the restroom in his original house though, they used this frog chamber pot for girls and a cat chamber pot that looked like this for boys back then. I guess they can aim pretty well during the 1950s.
The bag holder and sanitary bags inside the cubicle. This is the first time I’ve seen sanitary bags inside a cubicle, why are there no sanitary bags inside restrooms in the Philippines? Why?
What we ate in Bangkok
10 Thursday May 2012
Bangkok is an awesome place to get fat in because the grub is cheap and decent. Their serving sizes are smaller than what we’re used to in the Philippines though so maybe you wouldn’t get *that* fat, tamang taba lang. Plus, they like veggies so it’s healthy right?
Dinners in Khaosan Road and countless trips to 7-Eleven are not included in this post since I forgot to take photos a.k.a. I forgot what we ate as well.
First stop: Tom Yum Kung Restaurant. This was right next to our hotel, the food was a keri but the servers were a bit hot-tempered and inattentive so this was how I ordered in my head, “Kuya, kung di nakakahiya baka pwedeng mag-order, kung okay lang naman. Sorry kung naaabala ka namin.”
Second stop: Street food beside the Grand Palace. We thought that what we saw was shrimp, Ate assured us that it was shrimp but it was not shrimp, it’s not even a relative of the shrimp a.k.a. don’t you dare smile at us Ate.
Monk Business
09 Wednesday May 2012
Posted in Cambodia, Learn Something New, Thailand
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Monks were on the same category as unicorns for me, I see pretty photos of them everywhere yet I know so little about them. Since it was my first time to see monks in the flesh (and in the robe) I took every chance I got to snap a photo of them. It surprised me that some of them were smoking cigarettes and using DSLRs since I’ve always assumed that they’re supposed to live a life of goodness and poverty or something. From what I learned from talking to people in Thailand and Cambodia (and from Googling ‘how do Buddhist monks live’) here are my three wow-I-learned-something-new-about-monks:
A Tale of Two Hotels
04 Friday May 2012
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Because accommodations can also be attractions a.k.a take a look at our pretty hotels. Also, I realized that in Bangkok, the temples were maximalist and our hotel was minimalist while in Siem Reap, the temples were minimalist (puro bato kasi di ba) and our hotel was maximalist. Walalungs.
Bangkok-Siem Reap: Notes From A First Time Traveler
27 Friday Apr 2012
Our tour guide made us do this, we promise.
A collection of random thoughts and tips typed on my iPod during our recent travel to Thailand and Cambodia. We spent two and a half days in Bangkok, half a day for crossing the border, and three days in Siem Reap. Our group’s made up of five girls (and security became an issue once we crossed the border to Cambodia) and these are some of the things I wish I’ve read somewhere before we traveled.
