I thought it was about time to do an update!
We flew into Bangkok on the 8th of May, arriving at about 10pm local time. Collected our bags and headed for the taxi stand. We got hit by the intense humidity of the city instantly! Currently temperatures are around 30-35 degrees and properly muggy. Since the taxi driver spoke next to no English, it was an interesting trip across town. We managed to figure out where our place was after a bit of driving around the area.

We stayed at a place called Chern hostel which is about an 8 min walk from Khao San road, very nice place and I will review it in the “Tips for the road page” On our first day in Bangkok we started walking around town and bumped into a very friendly Thai guy, who spoke very decent English. He told us that it was a Buddhist holiday and we could get a TukTuk ride for 30 Bhat! about $1.10 NZD

This ride would take us to about 4 different temples and of course a suit shop and a travel shop. That’s how things work here. They get paid to take people to these shops. But it was fine and the shop owners soon realised we didnt really need suits! The temples we saw were quite amazing, adorned with anything that sparkles. They are by far the most well made and best kept buildings in the area.

We seemed to gravitate to Khao San road quite frequently. The constant hustling from Suit shops and tattoo shops is something you eventually get used to. But the people are nice if you are friendly to them. We took advantage of the $8 per hour massages just because.. they were $8! And we had to buy more singlets and shorts as soon as we got there. Our New Zealand attire was far too hot.

I brought a new meaning to sweating in Bangkok. Some days I would be sweating more than a 90min Bikram Yoga class just walking down the road! But I don’t mind it. The nights were a bit cooler and we often spent them down on Khao San. The night life there is properly crazy! There seems to be even more people out hustling. Little kids trying to sell you roses, old ladies trying to sell you bracelets with filthy words written on them. But aside from all that, we met some really cool people. There are a lot of people just like us who are just travelling around or working here in Thailand for a few months. It seems that Bangkok is just a transit for most people though. Almost all the people we met were heading off somewhere the next day, off to a places that are a bit less hectic!

All in all, Bangkok is a vibrant, busy, city with plenty of places to shop and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. But we were glad to be moving on to the next place after 8 days in the big city. We are now in Phuket in a place called Karon beach, I will put another post up about that soon!