Thai-riffic Thailand

Oh jeez, it's been almost a month since my last post. Don't blame me! Midterms are here! And we at HKU like to study hard, especially when we get a week off in the middle of the semester.

Oh wait, actually we went on another trip. Whoops! Studying was second to visiting Thailand.

I know what you're thinking. "Lauren, you literally just posted about going to the Philippines and now you're posting about ANOTHER TRIP to ANOTHER PLACE? Isn't this a Hong Kong blog?"

My answer to that would be: "umm... they have noodles in Thailand too."

Thus, I don't feel at all bad about skipping from one trip to another and saving my musings on Hong Kong for another day (believe me, I have a lot of them). So let me tell you about my reading week trip to Thailand. Here goes!



We flew into Bangkok on Saturday around 4am. Which was ridiculous because our 2.5 hour flight was supposed to leave at 10:30pm, but with delays and an unusually long line at immigration, it took awhile to make it to our hostel.

Sunday we woke up pretty late and had no idea what we were going to do in Bangkok, so we ate our first Thai curry (which basically burned my mouth off). Afterwards we went to a market, then took a boat through the canals to Khaosan Road, where we enjoyed a night at the bars. We bought things. A lot of things.

I loved the look of the outdoor market.

A small shrine at the market (these were everywhere in Bangkok!)

The colorful boat we took through the canal!

I thought the canal-side houses looked particularly peaceful.

It's hard to see here, but if you threw bread into the water TONS of fish fought to eat it.

On Khaosan Road we experienced the fun and frenzy Thai nightlife. Of course, being in Thailand didn't keep me from eating noodles...

Pad thai and Chang. Classic Thai dinner!

Khaosan Road!

This was a trailer that folded out into a crazy bar, complete with badass Thai bartender and thumping techno music.

This is what my vision looked like at the end of our night.

We have fun.

 Street food was cheap and easy to find, even after 2am. But my roommate Fiona and I went in on a special treat: barbecued scorpion. It was 50 baht and I'm pretty sure it's just a tourist thing ("I went to Thailand and ate scorpion look how cultured I am!!") but it was fun and makes a great facebook picture!

The next day, we tried to go to the Grand Palace, and book our sleeper train to Phuket, but our whole plan kind of fell through and we ended up buying a plane ticket to Trang to leave late on Monday. It took forever to figure everything out (we really weren't ahead of the game with planning the trip) and as a result, it was too late to see the Grand Palace. We eventually went out to another market and enjoyed a nice low key day.

Morris' expression can tell you... it was HOT!

But even the heat and humidity couldn't stop me from eating noodles! These thai noodles are literally the tastiest dish

Mango and sticky rice! I eat this all the time in the states and finally got to try the real thing!

The market was hot but it didn't stop people from enjoying themselves! DJs played at the Paella outdoor restaurant.

An odd stand in the artsy part of the market...

We traveled from place to place usually by taxi or tuk tuk, even though we had to pay more to squeeze all six of us into one vehicle.

The King of Thailand!

Monday was our last full day in Bangkok, and we finally got to see the Grand Palace before we left! It was beautiful and completely surreal. I felt like I was walking around on the set of my high school play, The King and I, but you know, with a much, much larger budget...

The buildings were impeccable and unlike anything I'd ever seen!

Jenny and I had to rent long pretty skirts to wear into the Palace because our pants were "indecent!"

We found a monk who was willing to pose for pictures with us, though he was really afraid of us touching him. I guess we're impure? I don't know enough about "monkism." 

We also entered "The Temple of the Emerald Buddha" which was spectacular, but I wasn't allowed to use my camera (or wear my shoes). Everyone was required to sit on the floor, look up at the Buddha and meditate quietly. Even though it was swarming with tourists, it felt very holy.

When we left the Palace, we only had an hour and a half before we had to be at the airport to catch our flight to Trang. One of the members of our party was supposed to meet us at the market cafe outside of the Palace because he felt that the entry fee was too expensive, but when we arrived, he was nowhere to be found! We looked high and low for this guy and eventually ended up asking the locals to help us. A waiter finally found him down the street, and when he showed up, all the locals at the market cheered. We rushed to catch a taxi and made it right on time for our flight to Trang.

The street in front of our hostel in Trang.

Inside the hostel

Our favorite cheap restaurant was literally connected to the hostel.

On the ride from the airport to our hostel, we met a lovely bunch of Mandarin-speaking Chinese tourists who were really excited to meet other Mandarin-speaking people (Morris and Jenny), and basically became our best friends. They invited us to their house in China, invited us out for dinner and gave us Chinese tea! I was not one of the Mandarin speakers so I'm sure all my nodding politely seemed silly, but they seemed to think I'm cool. I couldn't tell though, since they were speaking in Mandarin.

We all enjoyed one night in Trang before heading off to the island of Koh Ngai together the next day.

Smile!

Rose and Morris communicating by writing in Chinese (Morris can only write Chinese and speak Cantonese, not Mandarin).

First glimpse of the island...

I was having trouble getting off the boat in Koh Ngai...

Our tropical island bungalow! 

 Our time at Koh Ngai was the best part of the Thailand trip for me. We relaxed on the beach with banana rum punch, laid in the shallow water (it felt like a bathtub!), ate some delectable seafood soup and made a bonfire on the beach. Chris even stepped on a sea urchin (he was alright though). I hung out with stray dogs, read a book that Fiona let me borrow (The World of Suzie Wong, very romantic!) and watched the bright blue twinkling plankton in the night waves. It was all very surreal.

The next morning we snorkeled, which is basically one of my favorite activities in the world, and swam through "The Emerald Cave" to find an enclosed rocky beach inside of a volcano-like structure. It was pitch black inside the cave, smelled a bit like mold and took about fifteen minutes to swim through to the other side. I didn't get any pictures, because, well, we were swimming, but here are a couple shots of where we snorkeled!

It was SO BEAUTIFUL and there were so many brightly colored fish!

Even from the boat the little guys were visible!

I'm all set to snorkel!

The outside of Emerald Cave

After this fun excursion, we had to begin the long journey back to Bangkok. We headed back to Trang where we had one last excursion through Trang's National Park Canopy Walkway. It's a fun couple hours if you have the time.

The whole group at the beginning of the walk!

Chris studies the Thai safety instructions with great dedication...

Afterwards, we had to take a tuk tuk back to our hostel, and when I smiled at the people driving by on their motorcycles, they'd always smile back and wave! A couple of extra cool ladies even asked me where I was headed and I took their picture. The people in Thailand are extraordinarily nice.

Some very nice Thai ladies who made conversation with me as they were riding their motorcycle on the highway. How badass is that!?

From Trang, we took an overnight bus back to Bangkok. I listened to WTF with Marc Maron (his interview with Fiona Apple is my favorite) and ate little Thai snacks all the way there. We arrived at roughly 5am and had to find something to do until our plane left. We had breakfast, coconut shakes, pad thai and thai massages for several hours. We were really roughing it out there...

This cutie was snoozing under our breakfast table!

In the end, it was a really neat trip, though if I were to go back I would definitely make time to visit Chang Mai and Phuket. We didn't really end up doing many excursions or tourist-y Thai things (I really wanted to play with elephants) but it was nice to just relax and enjoy ourselves and see the culture.

In the next two weeks I'm visiting Mainland China and Vietnam, so there will probably be another RIDICULOUSLY long blog post on its way (which I will probably, once again, take awhile to finish). I'm really excited but also a little bit nervous since I won't have any time on the weekends to study. But I'm studying abroad! I probably learn more from cultural education anyway right?

Starting to feel a bit homesick, but still loving Hong Kong and I'm definitely leaving a lot of the day to day bits out of my blog. I'm definitely thinking about updating it a bit more often (maybe using fewer pictures and more... you know... life events?). Let me know what you think!

To hold you over until next time, here's another short video I made about the sandy beaches in the Philippines. Check it out!