I had a great time in Thailand, didn’t stay very long but I loved it there and will definitely go back! First I stayed 3 days in sweltering hot Bangkok and then I headed to Koh Chang, a quiet island in the East of the country where I spend the rest of my time relaxing in paradise.
Bangkok
After India I was happy to arrive in a big developed city with good infrastructure. After another nightly flight I arrived very early in Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport. Great first impressions there, it’s a very modern and clean airport. I managed to catch some sleep for a few hours on the observation deck after which I woke up with great hunger. Luckily for me, the airport has the best food court I’ve ever seen. There are many stalls which each serve their own street food dishes and it was so cheap too! After some delicious noodles I ventured out to my hostel. A train runs from the airport to the centre, where you can connect to the metro or trains running through the city. Planning to take the bus, I walked to the nearby bus stop and sat down. Man it was hot.. I was sweating so much. Even in the morning the temperature was over 35 degrees. I waited for half an hour but the right bus never came, so I decided to grab a Bolt motorbike instead.
It felt so good entering the hostel’s cold AC reception. Soaked in sweat I was able to cool down, check in and lay down in my room.
In March SE-Asia was suffering under a big heatwave, during my stay in Bangkok the temperature would regularly feel like 50 degrees which made it very hard to explore the city, walking was only possible for small distances, and every 30 minutes I would have to take shelter in a café with AC to cool down. Even in the parks it was so hot that I was still overheating in the shade. Travelling with the metro was better, but the AC there was so cold that you get a huge temperature shock. Bangkok is without a doubt the hottest place I have ever been. I wasn’t able to take many pictures as I found out that smartphones cannot withstand heat as well as humans. My phone would feel hot the whole time I was outside and the battery would drain very quick because of that. Sweating the whole time also fogged up the lens and when all your clothes are soaked in sweat there’s nothing dry to clean it with.
For lunch I grabbed some local street food next to the hostel. Thai food tastes so good! I ate a lot of street food, every day at a different place and I never had a dish that I didn’t like the taste of. It was really cheap as well, around 50 Thai baht which equals to 1,20 euro. I was able to gain some body weight back after losing 5 kilograms in Pakistan and India!
I also found good bread and lunch meat! There are 7-eleven convenience stores all over the country offering anything that one needs. I was lucky to have one right around the corner and I went there every day for a new flavour ice tea and some ice cream.
In the evening after it had cooled down I walked to the busy centre to find something to eat. Once again I had some really good local food. Most of the hostels are located in this cosy neighbourhood with alleyways close to Khao San road. While exploring the area I found some cool buildings, walked to the riverside to take more pictures and then looped back to Khao San road.
Khao San road is what I call the pinnacle of debauchery. It is a party road filled with bars, really loud music, massage salons, crazy street food like crispy scorpions and durians. Every bar there has girls on the street with menus to lure you in. Buckets of alcohol, weed, balloons of laughing gas. So many girls on the street selling themselves. It really is overwhelming, oriented purely for foreigners to party and go crazy.
I sat down at the least noisy bar for a beer. As the evening progressed the music became so loud! It got so bad I couldn’t even hear the live band anymore.
Thailand is a monarchy, just like Belgium. Bangkok has a lot of royal palaces, from past kings and present ones. The next day I walked to that area but turns out most of them are all walled off and most of them aren’t open for visits, except for tours booked way in advance. I ended up taking a bus to the next stop on my list: A cool local market to explore and find some crazy fruits. You can find things you’ve never even seen or heard of there. Most common are dragon fruits, durians, mangosteen, rambutan, jackfruit, guavas.. (nothing can beat Pakistani guavas however). Durians are the most famous of all these. They are big spiky watermelon-sized fruits that Thai people love to eat, but they can smell so bad! If there’s a shop selling durian you will smell it through the whole street! On the markets they have fresh fish everywhere as well as meat stalls where they chop up the animal carcasses right in front of you. You can’t get more fresh meat than that. It doesn’t look hygienic to European standards but it’s how it works in Asia and most parts of the world. Meat sometimes lays in the warmth for the whole day before someone buys it. Your intestines adapt to eating (slightly) spoiled food now and I’m happy that I rarely get sick from eating something bad anymore.
After the market I headed to Lumpini park. It’s the biggest green space in Bangkok and a good escape from the busy city. There are pretty pagodas and wide paths, a lot of shade under the numerous tree and in the middle is a big lake with a huge fountain. In the shade it still felt so warm, I was happy to cool down with some water from the lake. Impressive scenery awaits in the park, you can see the skyscrapers pop-up above the trees! The best thing of them all however is that monitor lizards live there! There are a bunch spread around the park, especially in the lake as they like to swim.
For my last day in Bangkok I visited some of the many Buddhist temples. I went to see the Big Buddha and Happy Buddha. The centre of Bangkok is littered with temples. They are beautifully decorated with small embezzlements and lots of gold. They have differently coloured roofs and consist of a big complex around the main temple. I didn’t visit enough for my taste, since I only saw 3. But they are definitely worth going to.
The tuk tuks of Bangkok. I can’t deny that they look very cool and are a LOT more roomy than then Indian ones, however all tuk tuks in Bangkok are scams and will massively overcharge you. At one of the temples some guy came up to me saying that tuk tuk tours were discounted that day and they would give me a tour for 50 baht. Bit sceptic but 50 baht is 50 bath so I got on. During the ride I found out on Google that it’s a common scam and that they wanted to sell me a bunch of stuff. I played along and went inside the stores he brought me to, looked around but didn’t buy anything and headed back out after a couple minutes. After the 2nd temple I discovered it was very close to my hostel, I was afraid that the driver would take me to a shady area or try to intimidate me so I decided to pay the driver his 50 baht and walk home.
After the temples I cooled down at the hostel, it was still unbelievably hot. In the evening I headed to busy Chinatown. What a wonderful area that is. You arrive on the main street full of light and neon signs. It was so busy there, loads of people walking around exploring the area with it’s many street food stalls. It really is difficult to choose what you want to eat, there’s just so much choice. I think it’s the busiest Chinatown I’ve ever seen in a city.
Koh Chang
Originally I planned to go to the north of Thailand and see Chang Mai. But I found out that it was burning season in the north, a period between December-April where farmers burn their fields to prepare them for the next year which means that the air quality is terrible and the whole region is covered in smoke. Not the greatest period to visit.. Soo I settled for this cute island that is Koh Chang
In the morning I checked out and headed to the airport. They have daily busses running from there to Koh Chang . The reason I chose this island is that it’s more quiet and affordable, and it’s located in the East of the country, which is relatively close, unlike the likes of Koh Samui or Phi Phi where most backpackers go. It’s a fairly big island, it takes you about an hour to get to the other side by scooter. There still is a vibrant backpacking scene, with plenty of places to go out in Lonely beach, which is anything but lonely surprisingly enough. Koh Chang means elephant island. The island’s name comes from it’s shape that resembles an elephant however there weren’t any elephants on the island originally.
I decided I would stay at Pyjamas hostel. It’s away from the party places, still located right at this beautiful sandy beach and they even have a swimming pool. Man I loved that hostel. It was a bit pricey but it included a great breakfast buffet! I made a lot of friends there, mostly people from all over Europe. There were always people to go out with. I had a great time relaxing there and I was able to recharge my batteries after 2 months of busy travel. It felt like a vacation in my big vacation haha.
For the next week I stayed there on the island. There’s plenty to see! I did some snorkeling, swam at waterfalls and learned how to drive a scooter to explore the island with. Koh Chang has a lot of hills, a couple of waterfalls and many many beaches. I went scuba diving for one day in the south and me and my friends visited an old abandoned hotel in the shape of a big ship. Best of all, it was way less warm than Bangkok. The temperature ranged around 33 degrees so whenever I felt too warm I just jumped in the pool. While scootering around we discovered a nice mangrove with a walkway running all the way to the coast and a local fishing harbor where we ate seafood.
There’s a healthy mix of local and western restaurants on the island. The local ones range around 2-5 euros for a meal and I usually ate there. Love Thai food! I think my favourite dish is Tom Yum, a soup with coconut milk. Because it is an island there is a lot of seafood available. It’s pretty pricey for backpackers on a budget but it’s something you cannot miss out on! Nothing better than some fresh crab or fish.
In most restaurants you have a cheap Thai option and a more expensive Western option like schnitzel for example. Fresh juices are so cheap, 1-2 euros for juice or a smoothie so I usually drank those with every meal.
I also went to an Italian restaurant where I ate really good pizza for the first time since I left home.
After chilling for 10 days on the island I headed back to Bangkok for one day before my flight. I went to a popular meet spot to discover the car scene there. It was really cool seeing so many Japanese cars and crazy Thai modification. Thai people are known to go crazy with vehicle mods. There’s really cool busses and trucks driving around with hundreds of mirrors as decoration and mad paint jobs. In the late hours of the night people at the meet invited me to join them for some driving around the city. It was a great experience and fitting end of my Thailand trip.
