Bangkok, Thailand

Ahhhh…a sigh of relief from the chaos that was Myanmar.

Since we already bought our flights to India for Dec. 8th and we want to be in India and Nepal at certain times, we have about 3 weeks to spend in Thailand before we head out. Which gives us time to prepare for my families visit to Thailand come April or May.

The first chunk of time we decided to spend in Bangkok to recover and be close to a hospital if needed. This wasn’t mentioned in the last post because there was so much information already on Myanmar, but I had a fever of 101.6 for four days, severe headaches and joint and stomach pains. I didn’t get a rash, but all of those are symptoms of Dengue Fever or who knows what else.

When we arrived in Bangkok I was feeling a little better, no fever even though I still had headaches and exhaustion, so I decided not to go to the hospital. We’ll never actually know if I had The Dengue or not. But, I’m sure glad that’s over. I’ve never been so sick, so often then the 3-4 months we’ve been traveling. It’s a good reminder that travel is not fun all of time and there is no place like home.

While we were in Bangkok, we did do some interesting things.

• The first is figuring out McDonald’s has 9 baht ($0.30) soft serve ice cream cones. What a good way to cool down in HOT Bangkok with ice cream. After we figured this out, we had them everyday. Maybe once we had them twice in one day (what?! we’re trying to fatten Dave up).

Yay! Cheap, good ice cream!

Dave with Ronald McDonald in Thailand.

• Dave finally got a haircut! It only cost 160 baht ($5.20) and it came out really great.

Looking good in pink.

Finished Product. Looking smexy.

• See Muay Thai Boxing for free

Dave ready for the fights.

Warming up the first fighter.

• Eat lots of street food

This was breakfast. There were about 8 different sides you can choose from and two with a bowl of rice costs $1. We couldn’t beat the prices.

This was very good chicken noodle soup that cost $1. Dave ruined his with too much spice though.

• Sell our Myanmar book in Banglamphu. Which is a very popular backpacking area and also VERY touristy with annoying tuk tuk drivers, over priced restaurants,  tattoo parlors, and lots of massage places. Not our place to be.

• Thai iced tea with cookies

I got the Thai iced tea with cookies. Which sounds horrible and is on the first sip, but then you get used to it and love the little cookie crumbs.

• Yummy dumplings!!!!

• Cooling down in all of the crazy huge malls Bangkok has. Seriously there are 4-5 GIANT malls in one little area.

They had a new aquarium that they were promoting with this. We had fun with it.

Holiday spirit in 80 plus degree weather. It feels weird.

• Crazy sidewalk clothes market. Worst idea ever. People are shopping and other people are annoyed behind them trying to walk.

Sidewalk madness.

• Traffic, traffic and more traffic. Also, they drive on the left, which made crossing the street that much more difficult.

Lots of traffic.

• Fresh fruit juice in the food court

Finally some fruit!

• Overpriced drinks with live jazz music.

Dave enjoying his beer.

The band.

This is just fruit juice. And they tried to charge me $7 for this alcoholic drink with out alcohol.

It was a nice refreshing break.  I’m sure we’ll come back at some point in our travels.