Thailand

Day 1

Holy smokes Thailand! (Feb 14-18) We arrived last night at the Baiyoke boutique hotel and had a quick meal in the lobby.  We ventured out and had a $5 dollar foot massage…how relaxing! Our feet were so tired after walking all over Singapore!

Day 2

A mere 6 hours of sleep later, we were picked up by a van and we began our long journey to the Damnoensaduak Floating Market.  Car and long boat brought us to the market where we boarded yet another boat that took us inside.  We had a rowing guide behind us who took us past the many floating markets.  

Vendors sold food from small stoves they had on their boats, drinks, and all sorts of souvenirs.  They had long poles with hooks that they would use on the tourist boats.  If you even LOOKED at something, it was enough of a reason for them to start offering you “a good price lady.”  We had to be careful not to get our fingers pinched by passing boats while we navigated ourselves through the market.  We bought some stuff for “a good price lady” if you remember and then we found them being sold for 1/3 of the price in the shops surrounding the floating tourist trap. Oh well, it was an experience J

We loaded back into the van for a stop at the JEATH War Museum and Death Railway Bridge.  We drank a fresh fruit smoothing for 30 baht ($1) and then ate lunch.  

More driving took us to the KANACHANABURI tiger temple.  A big reason why we can to Thailand was because of this temple.  At a summer art fair in Minneapolis, there was a photographer who had a picture of a monk walking beside a tiger.  Luke took one look at the scene and decided that he needed to see that place, and we went!! It was neat to see all the tigers in this large canyon, about 15 full grown tigers in all.  On the other hand, it was a little depressing because they seemed so sad, sleepy and almost drugged.  The temple guide was insistent that no drugs are used, but we’re not so sure.  The monks, who wore orange robes trained small tigers that were like puppies, wanting to play, bite and run around.  The little ones were fun to see and photograph because they were so active.  We left as the monks were taking the larger cats back to their enclosures for the night.

A quick stop at a small waterfall and then we went off to a floating restaurant for dinner.  It was really yummy, a nice change from Korean food!  Another boat ride took us to our hotel, a floating hotel on the River Kwai and we spent the evening outside chatting with a Dutch couple, a Danish couple and Raquel from Barcelona.  They were all traveling for 4+ weeks around Asia…and we thought 2 weeks was a long vacation!  There were geckos everywhere and it was warm and wonderful to sit by the river.  It was a GREAT day.

Day 3

We left the hotel at 8:00am the next morning after breakfast and visited Erawan Falls National Park.  We spent 3 hours hiking the 7 tiers of the waterfall.  They really made you work for the beautiful view!  Luke almost got attacked by a monkey who freaked out from the sound of the camera flash.  He threw some tourist’s make-up he was munching on and nearly bit Luke’s face off!  Understandably so, we were a little skittish around monkeys from them on, so we tried to avoid them for the rest of our vacation.  However there were so many in Cambodia and Malaysia and they seemed to sense our fear so they followed us around!!

We had lunch again on the floating restaurant: The Pad Thai and Watermelon were delicious!  After, we set off for our 3 ½ hours back to Bangkok.  We had some Indian food for dinner and got a 200 baht ($7) Thai massage which was a little strange.  We were put into a room and told to strip and put on these flowy clothes.  Then these two ladies came in and forcefully stretched us in all sorts of unnatural positions for an entire hour.  Luke lost his voice for a few days after the “massage” and he was convinced they stretched something in his neck that wasn’t supposed to be stretched J

Day 4

On Friday, we visited the Jim Thompson house.  Jim Thompson is a man from the US who fell in love with Thailand and built homes in and around Bangkok.  The country’s silk market was revitalized by his efforts before he disappeared in Malaysia in 1967.   Recently, the country has made his compound of houses into a museum and we got to explore the buildings and see his many pieces of ancient art he had collected.  Luke started to feel sick so we took a cab back to the hotel.  Before we arrived, Luke puked out the window, just missing a lucky motorcyclist with his projectile!  That night, with Luke still not feeling well, we went on a belated Valentine’s Day dinner cruise that we had booked earlier that day.  I ate from the buffet while Luke looked on, still feeling sick from earlier.  We saw the Grand Palace; Wat Arun, the “Temple of the Dawn”; Wat Kanlayanamit; and Bang Palace Khunprom, which were all lit up and very grandiose to see at night.  It was nice we saw them at all because I got sick that night and we were not able to explore the city the next day like we had planned.  All in all, we had a great time and we did some very unique things while in Thailand.  

If you would like to see all of our photos check out Luke's Facebook page or follow this link Thai Photos