{"id":17238,"date":"2014-04-29T06:27:52","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T11:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=17238"},"modified":"2014-04-29T08:48:47","modified_gmt":"2014-04-29T13:48:47","slug":"bangkok-day-3","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=17238","title":{"rendered":"Bangkok Day 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Bangkok Day 2 Part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bangkok is wearing us out. The city is big, the different places that we want to visit are all in different parts of the city. We feel like we spend half of the day running around just getting from one place to another. We kind of miss Chiang Mai and its small town feel. The people in Bangkok are not nearly as nice as Chiang Mai, no one ever smiles here.<\/p>\n

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\nAfter such a long day yesterday, we are shooting for a slower paced day today. We didn’t get out of our hotel until almost 11. Heading to Chinatown.<\/p>\n

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\nOffice of one of the river cruises that we saw last night.<\/p>\n

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\nIn Chinatown, where every single restaurant advertises shark fin soup.<\/p>\n

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\nSeriously, every single restaurant here makes a point to announce that they have shark fin soup.<\/p>\n

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\nA store selling dried shark fins. Shark fin tastes like rice noodles with little flavor.<\/p>\n

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\nA nice Porsche Cayenne parked in some disheveled work shop. Kind of an odd juxtaposition.<\/p>\n

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\nWe came here to see Chinatown, but also to see this temple, Wat Traimit.<\/p>\n

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\nIt houses the world’s largest Buddha statue made out of gold.<\/p>\n

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\nRL had to rent a wrap skirt from the ticket booth to cover up her shorts. Hahaha. She was not happy. Speaking of which, we didn’t expect so many temples to have dress codes for women to be in long pants. They let the guys slide, but not the women.<\/p>\n

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\nGOLD!!! The statue itself is actually quite large, around 10 feet tall. The gold percentage changes from the top being 99% pure to the bottom being 40%. The statue was once covered with plaster to prevent it from being stolen. For a few hundred years, it sat covered in plaster without anyone realizing that underneath was all gold.<\/p>\n

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\nGOLD!!! The statue is made up of many pieces fitted together and can be taken apart for transportation. Apparently, there is a key that is used to take it apart.<\/p>\n

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\nEwww.<\/p>\n

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\nTypical Chinese restaurant live seafood tanks.<\/p>\n

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\nWe need some sort of feeling of home over here. We decided that this would offer us some of that.<\/p>\n

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\nThis feels almost just like home. We are exhausted from traveling in Bangkok. Over stimulating in every way, and not in a good way.<\/p>\n

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\nPortrait series.<\/p>\n

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\nWe are so exhausted that we didn’t even feel like exploring Chinatown. Well, Chinatown seems to us to be just a bunch of shark fin soup restaurants anyway.<\/p>\n

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\nAnd a lot of shops that sell nothing but gold.<\/p>\n

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\nSerious, that’s all they sell, gold jewelery.<\/p>\n

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\nRL read a food blog about all the places to eat in Bangkok. The food looks great, but this blogger left shitty instructions on where to find the food. We were unable to even pinpoint several of the restaurants on a map, but we think that we found one that’s actually reachable, so we’ll try to go there for lunch.<\/p>\n

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\nAny of course, it’s closed. Supposed to have amazing pad thai. No worries, there’s another restaurant that the blog listed within walking distance of here.<\/p>\n

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\nThe Giant Swing. There’s no actual swing.<\/p>\n

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\nI believe this is the King of Thailand. His photos are everywhere. Who thought that this would be a good photo of him to blow up big?<\/p>\n

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\nFound the roast duck restaurant that the food blog recommended…except, there’s two of them side by side. Which is it???<\/p>\n

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\nWe decided that we’ll order small portions at both and try both!<\/p>\n

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\nHoney roasted duck. This was amazingly good! However, I think they were ripping us off a little. They had a menu with the prices marked out and next to it with marked up prices. This is an old tactic that restaurants use to give foreigners a different marked up menu than the locals. Bastards!<\/p>\n

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\nWent to the restaurant next door to try their duck.<\/p>\n

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\nThe moment we sat down, RL said that this was the one the blogger recommended. She remembers the photos matching this place.<\/p>\n

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\nPrices are about half of the other place next door. I think these are regular prices.<\/p>\n

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\nFood was good…but..Damn it, not quite as good as the place next door that ripped us off. So torn!!<\/p>\n

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\nAnd they even have awesome service here too. They packed up our food to go when we had left over!<\/p>\n

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\nAnd each dish goes into its own individual plastic bag too! Argh, why do I like the food at the place with crappier service and ripped me off more? Why!!!!<\/p>\n

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\nToo scared to try those.<\/p>\n

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\nHow does he find the different parts that he needs to make repairs?<\/p>\n

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\nBetter view of the Giant Swing. Again, there is no swing.<\/p>\n

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\nBangkok city hall. We are going to take it easy today, so it means that we are heading back to our hotel to take a nap. We are just so exhausted from being in Bangkok.<\/p>\n

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\nStraight ahead is where the night market and the flower market we went to yesterday. Heading back home to REST!<\/p>\n

Went back to our hotel, took a nap. Then started blogging, only to be disturbed by the sounds of yelling over a loudspeaker. WTF?<\/p>\n

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\nThe alley outside of our window, which never has anyone walking around, now has a crowd of people.<\/p>\n

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\nRemember when I said that I booked a hotel outside of city center so I didn’t have to deal with the ongoing protests in Bangkok? Oh the irony. The protest somehow decided to come out of the city center and surround our hotel in the outer skirts! This is comical…<\/p>\n

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\nBangkok does not want me to have a peaceful time. Traffic came to a grinding halt while the protesters marched down the street. I guess the good news is that we didn’t plan on going anywhere for a while anyway.<\/p>\n

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\nAll the protesters are of lower socioeconomic status.<\/p>\n

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\nSome of them get bused around.<\/p>\n

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\nThe road blockade finally lets loose when the protesters leave the area. Go go go.<\/p>\n

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\nWell, that was fun…except I am kicking myself for booking a hotel so far out when I could have easily booked a hotel closer in the center of the city and probably have avoided the protesters.<\/p>\n

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\nI came back inside, and saw…a tourist.<\/p>\n

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\nOh, free longans for the guests. Don’t mind if I eat some.<\/p>\n

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\nWe also took care of some house keeping stuff today. Did some laundry, and walked across the street to get our passport photos taken for our Cambodia visa.<\/p>\n

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\n$6 for 12 passport photos, much cheaper than the US.<\/p>\n

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\nWhile I blogged RL did some sketches.<\/p>\n

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\nAnd ate some leftover duck.<\/p>\n

It’s time to head out and grab some dinner. After dinner, we had planned on checking out some of the nightlife that Bangkok is so famous for.<\/p>\n

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\nFirst, picked up our passport photos. They touched up our photos without us making a request. Hah.<\/p>\n

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\nAt the BTS station, the night is young.<\/p>\n

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\nMany BTS stops later, we’ve reached a small food stall street. The food blogger that RL has been following recommended a mango sticky rice stand here.<\/p>\n

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\nFound, to our surprise.<\/p>\n

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\nI think I’ll have some pad thai on top of the mango sticky rice.<\/p>\n

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\nReally really good. The mango was just perfect.<\/p>\n

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\nMy pad thai was also amazing. Though, I must say, the best pad thai I had was that egg omelet pad thai in Chiang Mai.<\/p>\n

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\nStill very delicious though.<\/p>\n

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\nThis area definitely had the most Western tourists that we’ve seen since being in Bangkok.<\/p>\n

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\nNow heading to one of the red light districts in Bangkok, Soi Cowboy.<\/p>\n

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\nThere’s a lady boy. In fact, we saw a few lady boys on the BTS train to Soi Cowboy.<\/p>\n

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\nThere’s the red light street.<\/p>\n

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\nGross.<\/p>\n

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\nHere’s Soi Cowboy, the more tame of Bangkok’s red light districts. There is also Nana Plaza, which is supposed to be a more x rated red light district.<\/p>\n

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\nIn the middle of all these strip clubs sits two random store fronts.<\/p>\n

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\nI wonder what these stores really are?<\/p>\n

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\nWe sat down at a bar, and across from us is a lady boy bar.<\/p>\n

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\nOne beer, and we are out of here. This isn’t what we thought the area was going to be. We innocently thought that this would be just a bar area with some x rated bars mixed in between, sort of like Bourbon street. Nope, this is a street of strip clubs and whore houses, that also serves alcohol. The only tourists here are the clients…we are in the wrong place.<\/p>\n

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We did take a peep behind the curtains. Our bar had a bunch of girls lined up dancing on stage, but not really dancing. They are just up there moving around, and they have numbers on them. The clients can pick the girls by their numbers. Then you can fill in the rest.<\/p>\n

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\nNot the place for us. We haven’t seen as many sex tourists walking around Bangkok as in Chiang Mai, we found them all here tonight.<\/p>\n

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\nWe were prepared to go out, and this place was a let down for us, so we decided to head to Khao San road, the backpackers’ hot spot, for a drink.<\/p>\n

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\nA few BTS stations by train.<\/p>\n

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\nThen call a taxi to take us the rest of the way. This is not a city that’s easy to get around in. It takes forever just to get from one spot to another.<\/p>\n

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\nOur taxi passed by Dusit Palace. I believe this is where the king lives.<\/p>\n

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\nReached Khao San Road.<\/p>\n

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\nI’ve never seen so many backpackers congregated in one single area before. There’s EDM blasting from the bars. Ugh…I don’t want to deal with this right now. This feels hectic.<\/p>\n

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\nThe elephants are back.<\/p>\n

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\nNice sign.<\/p>\n

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\nCrazy to think that there are so many backpackers here in Bangkok…and yet, when I am out and about on the street, I rarely see another backpacker.<\/p>\n

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\nOK, let’s get a drink and see if we can soak this in. We walked about halfway down Khao San road where it’s a little quieter. But really, this whole street is just a giant party street. Not sure how anyone can sleep inside one of the guesthouses that lines this place. The energy and noise level feels similar to 6th street in Austin on a busy night. There’s this frenzied energy to this area, the feeding frenzy of looking to hook up with one another. Lots of party boy douche bags in this area along with your hippie free spirit girls. Again, I am too old for this shit. Sigh, I am old.<\/p>\n

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\nNot amused, it’s hot and I am tired. Not to mention, most of the people here are in their mid to early 20s. It feels like dirty 6th in Austin.<\/p>\n

We are both tired, and at this place, we either have 1 drink or we have 10. We weren’t prepared for 10, so we decided to go home. Bangkok and us doesn’t seem to be a great fit…<\/p>\n

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\nSo, with RL’s permission, I am throwing her under the elephant bus. The first item that RL purchased in Chiang Mai at Sunday market was this dress above. Except, this photo was taken here at Khao San Road in Bangkok. Yup, her elephant dress that she got sells all over Thailand.<\/p>\n

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\nElephants everywhere.<\/p>\n

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\nWeak, not the real full body Thai massage.<\/p>\n

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\nAnd, here’s that dress again.<\/p>\n

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\nAnd again, and again and again. I think we saw this dress sold at no less than 6 shops on Khao San Road. RL says that at least she’s got good taste since they sell so many of the dresses…I also see a lot of questionable merchandise getting sold again and again and again though.<\/p>\n

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\nGot a taxi, take us home. We wanted to go out and have a fun night of drinking and partying. Did not happen. Bangkok, we tried tonight but you didn’t offer us what we were looking for.<\/p>\n

To be continued at Bangkok Day 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Bangkok Day 2 Part 2. Bangkok is wearing us out. The city is big, the different places that we want to visit are all in different parts of the city. We feel like we spend half of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":16447,"menu_order":8,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-17238","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17238"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17717,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17238\/revisions\/17717"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}