The line to get off of Koh Tao and onto a boat that would take us to the mainland and then onward to Bangkok was a mile long.  It’s controlled chaos.  Tourists are freaking out, thinking they’ll miss their boat and so they start doing stupid things like trying to cut the line.  The locals are trying to keep everyone calm, but you could tell they were used to this mess.  It was so very hot and it didn’t help that you’ve got your bags to carry with you.  When the line started moving, we eventually got to a bend in the line where we would find cover from the afternoon sun and a girl tried to cut in front of us.  I didn’t mean to yell at her, I promise, but…well she got the idea and headed towards the back of the line.  Once we got on the boat it started raining on us, but it was a nice relief from standing in the hot sun for a couple of hours.

When the boat docked and we collected our bags, it was time to wait some more.  Travel days, no matter which country, always, always, always are like this.  Hurry up and wait.  There’s usually a local shop or two where you can grab a bite to eat or some water and go to the bathroom, so you end up standing around and chatting with other travelers.  We were waiting for bus #4 to pull up and when it finally did we tried to board as soon as possible, so we could get a seat towards the front because that helps with Mandy’s motion sickness.  If she can see out the front window she’s less likely to get sick.  But the woman ‘helping’ people into the bus had other ideas.  We were to sit in assigned seats that we hadn’t noticed on our tickets beforehand.  This would have been fine with us, except that after a few people had boarded she kinda just left and people started sitting wherever they wanted.  And so of course, the front seats were taken.

Travel days can be pretty stressful and this day would turn out to be no different. I don’t even remember how long the ride was.  At this point in our trip, a 12 hour bus ride didn’t even phase us.  However long it was, we pulled into Bangkok and it was dark.  We start getting off the bus and are immediately approached by taxi drivers.  Now, you have to understand something here.  We know not to take these guys up on their offers.  They’re hawks.  They’re hoping you’ll just hand over whatever amount they’re asking for no questions and they can make some good money.

But we were tired.  So very very tired.  Between the line to wait for the boat, the boat ride, the wait for the bus, the bus ride, you get to a point where you just don’t care anymore.  So we told one of the taxi drivers where we were headed and he told us that it was very, very far from where the bus had dropped us off and that it would be 900 baht, which is roughly the equivalent of $25 USD.  But we knew that was crazy expensive, even if we did have to drive across the city.  We talked him down to 600 baht with the footnote that he would pay a toll we would have to take.  $17 vs $25 doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re budget traveling like we were, every penny counts.

Yeah, it took us an hour to get to our hotel.  Maybe we should have just paid him the $25 he was asking for.

We checked in, found some food, and then went to sleep.

Bangkok was intense.  By this point, we could figure out any city’s local transportation system pretty easily and it was no different here except that where we wanted to go, you could only get so far on the tram, then you had to transfer to either a taxi or tuk tuk and both were trying to rip you off.  But we dealt with it pretty well I think.

First up was the infamous Kao San road

Famous for it’s bars, backpacker hostels and tourist rip offs, we actually went out here twice.  Once during the day and once at night and it’s two different animals.  There’s a vendor selling all sorts of fried insects…everything from spiders to ants and he charges money to take a picture which is why you’re spared from seeing any of that here.  We also bought all of our patches here.  When we were in Central America, we started finding patches of different countries and the idea is you sew them to your backpack as a sort of homage to your travels.  They were so expensive in Central America but we were told by multiple people who had travelled to SE Asia to wait until we got here and we’re glad we did.  We got a great deal on almost all of the countries we’ve visited and even some we haven’t but plan to.

We had to see the reclining buddha in Wat Pho.   We knew it was big, but when you see it in person, it’s just…impossible to imagine humans building something like this.  It was hard to get a good shot, the thing was so big.  That’s what she said.

And some other shots from around Wat Pho.

It’s all a very peaceful, respectful affair.  If you’re wearing the wrong kind of clothes, they have shawls for you to wear and we saw an inordinate amount of clueless tourists who thought it would be ok to walk into these sacred places wearing spaghetti straps and flip flops.  Don’t do that.

Anyway, we somehow spent an entire week in Bangkok and it was way too much time.  Big cities just aren’t our thing we found out.  There is obviously a whole lot more to see, but we were getting to a point where we just needed a rest and so we did.  We got sim cards here finally, which would serve us well for the remainder of our time in Thailand.  No longer would we be bound by needing wifi for our phones to work and it would make travel days much more bearable.

Speaking of travel days, we decided to fly to our next destination: Chiang Mai.  You can take an overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, and I’m sure it’s an experience you wouldn’t forget.  But after doing our research and seeing the cost of a flight versus the train, it didn’t make much sense for us to put ourselves through the train.  We knew we wouldn’t sleep on a rocking train and we could get to Chiang Mai in the same day on a flight.  It was sort of a no brainer for us. We also only had a few weeks left on our visas and then we had to get out of the country.