My Week in Thailand – Bangkok
Teradise found … It’s exactly one month since I’ve come back from Thailand and I can say with absolute certainty that this was the greatest trip of my life so far. Thailand is country number one hundred and two that I’ve visited and why have I waited so long to visit my motherland ? Let me dive deep for a minute and give you a bit of my background… For those of you who don’t know I’m half Thai from my mother’s side and my father is English and Dutch. My parents met in Thailand during the Vietnam war when my father was stationed there. My mother left Thailand pregnant with me in 1976 only to return once more when her father died in 1985. She happily left Thailand for a new life in America and never took us back to visit or spoke Thai with my sister and I after we started primary school. In fact all I really remember in Thai are colors , numbers ,basic phrases pertaining to food , salutations, and I can recite The three little pigs. So random … As I got older I’ve always wanted to take my mom back to Thailand so I saved this trip thinking we would return together . As the years passed and I kept asking my mother to go with me I started to realize then accept that she just didn’t want to go. She had her reasons and after having many of my own life experiences I understood why she didn’t have the same desires I did to see her homeland. My Dad, best friend Charmane and countless other friends kept telling me I needed to go to Thailand . I should see and experience this incredible country for myself. So finally in August of 2023 with my husband we spent one incredible month in Thailand. Week one Bangkok Beginning in Bangkok we arrived into Suvarnabhumi which serves as the main airport for international arrivals. My first tip is get a Thai SIM card here http://www.ais.th I can’t believe I had to go to Thailand to have BETTER wifi and cell phone service but here we were! Two Youtube channels we binged on were Retired working for you https://youtu.be/NFw-WizIt50?si=poCQYbuH0Sgr4oq2 . Chris is so funny and in this video he explains how to make your arrival into Thailand much easier . Paddy Doyle has fantastic guides that we bought from his channel https://youtube.com/@PaddyDoyle.?si=IX6PAHHzrtCkWvQd .Although he’s lived in Thailand for many years he’s made countless videos of himself traveling the world and I like is carefree enthusiastic personality as he documents his journey. I booked our tickets six months in advance to Thailand from Italy and we had an idea of the regions we wanted to visit so we made an itinerary based on where we were going to be from one week to the next. In the four weeks we would be there we started in Bangkok . We stayed at The Carlton Hotel on Sukhumvit RD .The Carlton hotel is incredible and within walking distance to great shopping malls , food markets, breakfast spots , Thai massage and anything else you could possibly need. Some spots near our hotel we shopped and ate at were http://terminal21.co.th where you can get anything from clothes to electronics . http://emquartier.co.th had the most beautiful food market I’ve ever seen in my life! This luxury mall has all the high -end shops and on our last night here we ate delicious Mexican food at La Monita . There was this twenty -four-hour mango sticky rice spot across from our hotel that we hit up after a long day of sightseeing temples and it was SO GOOD. The mangos in Thailand are on another level .. ask anyone who’s had one seriously ! We also had Pang Cha which is Thai Iced Tea with shaved ice, soft white bread topped with tapioca pearls. It’s hard to describe unless you try it but its a sweet crunchy chewy combination of pure deliciousness ! We took ours to go and strolled Bangkok at night absorbing all of the beautiful chaos that is this fantastic city! Our first night we were exhausted so we had our first dinner Of Pad Thai, Tom Yumm Goong , and red curry at Pak Bakery and passed out early. Day Two Our second Day we headed to Lumpini park because I wanted to see the Thai Monitor lizards. You all know how obsessed I become with animals and this was my goal for the trip. We took a tuk-tuk to the park and after walking around for a good twenty minutes I finally spotted one! He (I’m assuming a male but I’m not sure ) just slinked past me and I got so excited and took my first selfie of the trip with him . They are super chill I mean we found them mostly sleeping on the grassy banks or swimming slowly in the water . I read a sign at Lumpini that said the Thai Park Authority had to remove many lizards because they would frighten the tourists but I was happy nevertheless to see about twenty of them just living in the park .. It was close to lunch time so I remembered my girlfriend Christy Bomb a few years prior had mentioned a Street food chef by the name of Jay Fai . She’s also profiled in the Netflix show Street Food Asia but it was Christy who sent me a YouTube link of Jay Fai cooking her famous crab omelette years before that sparked my curiosity . She was located a bit far from Lumpini so we got back in a Tuk Tuk and headed over not knowing what to expect but we had some luck on our side that day for sure… I’ll say this about OUR Jay Fai experience , we loved it. Yes you have to wait.. a long time. We put our names down (party of two)
