Tiger Temple

Alyssa and I had originally planned to take the night train to Chaing Mai, but since they were sold out, we were forced to buy flights instead. Since we hadn't planned on staying in Bangkok an additional night, we hadn't reserved our hostel room and there was no availability. Luckily, there was another nearby hostel that did have a room. We packed up our stuff and I took mine to Jane and Te Tee's hotel to store it until we got back later that evening and could check into the new hostel.
Te Tee had set up a private tour for us to see the sights around Bangkok. We had our own luxury van for the five of us along with a driver and tour guide. It was very fancy compared to the tours Alyssa and I usually take and we were happy to have so much space. It was a few hours drive out to our first stop, the floating markets.

The floating markets used to be a legitamate area of local commerce but now, they just exist for the tourists. We got our own motorized boat which our guide manuevered through the narrow, man made waterways. There are little shops set up along the side of the river as well as vendors that sell food and other goods from their boats. We spent an hour crusing through the area, mostly trying the delicious food since all of the items they were selling were the same ones they sell at every other market we've been to.

The next stop on our tour was at the Kanchanaburi war cemetery. After entering WWII in December of 1941, the Japanese forces overran most of SE Asia. They needed a shorter and more secure line between Burma and Thailand so they used prisoners of war and civilian labor to build a railroad between the two. Two forces worked at opposite ends and met in the middle in October 1943. The project cost the lives of 15,000 prisoners of war and 100,000 civilians as a result of sickness and mistreatment. The Kanchanaburi cemetery was built as a final resting place for those who died during the war.

After visiting the cemetery, we went to see the bridge over the Kwai river that the Japanese had built. It has since but updated but the original tracks are also still in place.

After walking across the bridge, we had lunch at a local buffet. They had pretty much any kind of food you could want so we all found something that we liked.

Following lunch, we headed to the main attraction of our tour, the tiger temple. The temple was also a sanctuary to many other species of animals which we got to see as we toured the grounds.

You could pay extra to have "play time" with the lions but we had opted out of that option, so we stood behind the gate to watch the people inside. The trainers flailed plastic bags tied to sticks around and the tigers would jump and claw at them. This seemed like a very flawed plan to me considering the tigers were not chained up at all and the people were pushed up against a wall with no where to go. Often, the trainers would pull the bags into their body to hide them from the tiger which seemed like just about the stupidest thing you could do. They say that there haven't been any attacks there but I have a hard time believing that. Even if the tiger was just trying to play, they would still really be able to hurt you.

After watching the tiger play time, we got to take pictures with a baby tiger. He was really cute but we got the impression from the trainer that the baby tigers could be even more unpredictable and they kept a very close watch on them. You had to approach the tiger from behind, sitting down slowly behind it and gently touch it's back. I wasn't afraid but Jane and Taya definitely were.

Next, we headed to the adult tigers. You basically did a photo rotation with over ten different tigers. You had a person to guide you around to each tiger and then a photographer who would take your camera and take your picture with the tiger. These tigers were chained up and seemed pretty docile. They say that the tigers aren't drugged, they are just tired from being full and hot but it seemed questionable to all of us. They paraded all of the tourists through the area so that it was almost impossible to get a picture without a ton of other people in it. I did have a few tigers that seemed agitated and would growl or move, which freaked me out everyime, but overall I wasn't scared of them. It seemed like they were used to this sort of thing happening day in and day out.
After the tour, I wasn't sure how I felt about the tiger sanctuary. Tigers are endangered in Thailand so it is good that they are trying to maintain a safe place for them, but they purchase the tigers from the black market which really only perpetuates the cycle of poaching from the wild. The tigers also don't have much of a natural habitat and their space seemed pretty limited which was sad. It was amazing to be that close to a tiger though.

It was quite a long drive back to town and traffic only delayed us more. Te Tee was starving when we got back to town and wanted to eat dinner right away even though it was only 6:00pm. Taya, Alyssa and I really needed to go check into our new hostel before reception closed for the night, so we decided to do dinner separately and meet up later in the evening. We grabbed our bags and trekked to "In A Box" hostel. This hostel was a few dollars more expensive than our last hostel but was very nice. There hadn't been enough beds available in the female dorm for all of us to stay in there so I offered to stay in the mixed dorm, which of course ended up being all men. I put my stuff away in the room and met up with Alyssa and Taya so that we could go get dinner. We had some delicious green curry at a local street restaurant near our hostel. I love how delicious and cheap the Thai food is!

When we met up with Te Tee and Jane at their hotel, Jane had bought us some delicious chocolate filled bear buns for dessert. They were too cute!

We decided just to stay in our area for the night and looked for a bar nearby. Luckily there was one right across the street from the hotel, so we ordered a beer tower and settled in for some people watching. Te Tee had half a beer so after about an hour, he was ready for bed (he is allergic to alcohol). We all called it a night since we had to be up early for our flight to Chiang Mai the next morning. Although I went to bed at a reasonable hour, I got absolutely no sleep because the guy in the bed below me snored so loud I could feel my internal organs vibrating. I downloaded a white noise app to my ipad but it took a few hours to download because of our shitty wifi connection so I just lay there, stopping myself from smothering the guy with a pillow.

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Free day!

Te Tee had dubbed this our "free day", meaning that we had no touristy plans. We would be waiting for Alyssa's friend Taya to fly in that night before we started our Bangkok tours the following day. Alyssa wanted to meet up and have breakfast with Martinho (our friend that we had met in Brazil) who happened to be in town for work, so I met up with Jane and Te Tee at their hotel. We took the metro to one of the big malls and walked through, checking out the different shops and their massive food courts. They had so many delicious looking things that it was hard not to want to try them all!

Te Tee loves all of the different shopping areas and made sure to point them all out, even though none of us really did much shopping. It's pretty hard to shop when you have no space to carry anything and no money to spend, lol.

Jane and I were desperate to get massages, so we met up with Alyssa back at our hostel and went out in search of a good place. We settled on a place down the street that seemed cheap and signed in for an hour massage. Unfortunately massages are rarely hard enough for me (even though Thai massages are usually painful for most people) and these masseuses seemed to only focus on our calves. The massage was sub-par and didn't leave me feeling very relaxed afterwards, although the people who worked there were very nice. Jane didn't feel very satisfied either, so we decided we were going in search of another place to get an additional massage. Te Tee and Alyssa were done with massages, so they headed off to get some food. Jane and I found a nicer place (which was also more expensive) and decided to go for the two-hour Thai massage. This massage was much more professional- they brought us into a secluded room with music and dim lighting, unlike the earlier place which had just seated us all in the same loud room together. My masseuse was very good and could definitely give a hard massage. Jane doesn't like it to be that hard so she had to tell her masseuse a few times to lessen the pressure. After this massage I felt great and a little spoiled for having three hours of massage that day. Jane and I split up to go and shower at our respective hotels before we would all meet up for dinner.
We decided to try out some street food for dinner as it is often the most delicious. Te Tee took us to a great place where there are tons of restaurants all set up next to each other on the main street. We ordered way too much food of course, but it was all delicious and much of it Alyssa and I had never tried before. We particularly liked the morning glory, which was a new vegetable for us.

After dinner, we were supposed to go see a show but Alyssa needed to go meet Taya at the airport and we didn't think there'd be time to do it all. We decided to see the show another day and Alyssa grabbed the metro to head out to the airport. Te Tee, Jane and I decided to go to Patpong, which is a part of town where they sell all of the counterfeit items, to see if there was anything we wanted to buy. I had fallen in love with this Mulberry clutch that apparently usually costs $2,000. I had never heard of the brand Mulberry before, I just liked the little tree symbol that comes on it...lol. I priced it at a number of places but the price really varied based on the quality of the leather etc. I wasn't willing to pay more than $30 for it, so I didn't end up getting one. As we shopped, the cops showed up to make their rounds. It was hilarious to watch the vendors frantically pack up their counterfeit goods- some people only had one or two things left in their whole stall! Te Tee said that even though it is illegal to sell the counterfeit things, it is rarely enforced; they just tell the vendors to put those things away.
After a hard night of shopping, we stopped to get some boba tea. I love boba tea in the states, so I want to order one every time I see them here to try new flavors.

We headed back to our side of town via the metro. I left Te Tee and Jane at their hotel and continued back to the hostel to wait for Taya and Alyssa to return from the airport.

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Te Tee the Thailand tour guide

I was woken up by Alyssa saying that Jane and Te Tee were downstairs in the lobby. Te Tee and Jane are my good friends from LA (Te Tee is also my former work colleague and roommate) that had come out to Thailand to visit us for a few weeks of our trip. Te Tee was born in Bangkok and comes to Thailand almost every year, so it would be different to be with someone who actually knew what there was to do in a place that we were visiting. I hurriedly got dressed and headed downstairs to meet them. They were staying at a hotel not far from our hostel. I totally understood the desire to stay somewhere nicer since they were there on vacation.
Te Tee already had an itinerary for the day in mind, so we set out right away towards the boat dock. The boat took us down the Chao Phraya river where we had a nice view of some of the temples, then dropped us off within walking distance of the Royal Palace.

Once we reached the Royal Palace, Alyssa, Jane and I took the scarfs we'd been carrying and turned them into very stylish skirts since we were wearing shorts which were not temple appropriate. TeTee was also wearing shorts so he had to rent some temple pants for a small fee. The palace was gorgeous and extremely ornate. I couldn't believe how much gold they used; the entire place just shimmered in the sun.

Te Tee showed us how to bless yourself with the holy water. You dip one of the flowers into the blessed water and then sprinkle it over your head. We saw people even sprinkling it into their mouths which I found disturbing.

After the Royal Palace, we headed to another temple named "Wat Pho" to see the giant reclining Buddha. Te Tee didn't pay to come into see this since he had seen it so many times before, so we were on our own. This was a huge Buddha made entirely of gold. It was almost impossible to capture the whole thing in a photograph.

We stopped at one of the temples inside to make an offering. With a small donation, you are given two candles and insense which you attach a prayer to and place in front of the temple. We always light a candle for our mother in Catholic churches so we figured why not do one for each of our parents at the Buddhist temple since our father practices Buddhism.

After wandering through temples for a few hours, we were hot and needed a break. Te Tee took us to Khao San, one of the main shopping streets where he knew we could get some cheap food. On the way, we ran into many protests in the streets. There had been a lot of concern from friends back home about us coming to Bangkok at this time since some of the protests had resulted in violence. I really didn't even know what they were protesting until we got there and saw them in action.

The antigovernment protesters have taken several key intersections in Bangkok in an attempt to shut down the capital. They want Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to step down and are trying to make the country ungovernable until that happens by surrounding government buildings. So far, Yingluck has refused to resign but instead called snap elections for Feb. 2 to reassert her popular mandate. Protesters accuse Yingluck of being a puppet of her older brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Her brother came into power in 2001 and won support among the rural poor for his populist policies. However, the praise he received annoyed traditional elites and he was accused of overshadowing revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Thaksin was eventually ousted in a military coup in 2006 and convicted of corruption in absentia, which he insists was politically motivated. The current demonstrations began early November as opposition to a now halted amnesty bill that would have allowed Thaksin to return home a free man with some $1.2 billion in seized cash and assets.

Once we got away from the protests, everything was peaceful and calm. We decided to get some pad thai because it looked delicious and was only $1USD. It was as good as it looked as the lady made each order fresh for you to your liking.

We shopped for a while, although despite how cute some of the clothes were, there was no way Asian sizes were ever going to fit me. We headed to a local store similar to a Target called "Big C" where we could stock up on supplies. For Te Tee and Jane, stocking up on supplies means tons of junk food and they were excited to try all of the bizarre favors that Asia has to offer- salmon flavored chips? No thank you!

We headed back to the hostel to shower and change before we went out for the night. Te Tee wanted to take us to "Long Table" restaurant for a classy dinner, which he insisted on paying for. He knows that we have a limited budget (Jane also recently quit her job), so he wanted to treat us. Te Tee is always wonderfully giving and is such a good friend. We ordered a set menu with 13 small courses. The food was absolutely amazing! They had some of the best dishes we'd ever tasted and we couldn't have been more pleased with the meal. One funny aspect of it was that we sat on these little couches with a low table, so you took your shoes off and sat essentially on the floor. I liked it, but if you had to use the bathroom, they provided you with little slippers so you didn't go barefoot, lol.

After dinner, we headed out to the clubbing side of town. Te Tee recommended a club called "Route 66" that he likes. I think the scene was different from what he usually sees there because we went on a weeknight and so he seemed disappointed. I thought it was fine though considering. With the $30 cover, you got drink vouchers to use. Since Te Tee doesn't drink, we had a little extra to work with. The three of us got Long Island ice teas in an attempt to get our money's worth. The club had three different areas- the main dance floor was completely empty and everyone was in the larger room where the DJ was. Unfortunately there wasn't a great area to be in if you hadn't purchased bottle service and the DJ was really inconsistent with his music choices, leaving us confused most of the time. We stayed for about two hours before deciding to head back. However, we did enjoy playing with the laser lights at the exit which provided endless awesome photo opportunities.

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Bangkok

Our horrible night bus continued driving until around 7:00am when we arrived at the Cambodia-Thailand border. We got out of the bus, were given our bags and stood in confusion wondering what to do next. We asked the bus attendant how the bus on the other side of the border would know that we had already paid for our onward ticket and he asked us for our tickets that we had used to board the bus the night before. I still had mine, but Alyssa had lost hers somewhere. He gave me a small piece of yellow tape that was to be used as my ticket onward but refused to give Alyssa one because she didn't have her ticket. We argued that this was ridiculous since he knew she was on the bus but he just ignored us and moved on. One of the other passengers saw our distress and gave us an extra ticket he happened to have with him so that she would be able to get a piece of tape as well. It was incredibly nice of him and I don't know what we would have done otherwise.
We waited in line to get our Thailand exit stamp for about an hour. There were only two windows open and so there were tons of people waiting to get through. The same guy who wouldn't give Alyssa her bus ticket told us that there was a VIP line where you could get straight through without waiting, but it cost $300. We thought that was absolutely absurd and continued waiting in line. After getting our exit stamp, we headed across the border to get our entry stamp into Thailand. The line here was even longer. We waited almost two hours to get through. I couldn't believe how many Cambodians found it perfectly acceptable to cut in front of the line. They would walk in and just stand in the middle instead of in the back. I was becoming infuriated by this and finally told some women "no" when they tried to cut in front of me. I was surprised by just how rude Asian people often are. They bump into you or take your space and it never seems to phase them, it's just what they do.
We finally made it through customs and didn't even have to pay an entrance fee. Once across the border, we had no idea how to find our next bus. Luckily, the bus people were looking for our yellow tape and flagged us down to wait in a nearby shop for the bus. There were a few other Americans that had been on our bus from Cambodia that were on the bus to Bangkok aswell, so we chatted with them about their respective travels. We hadn't had any breakfast, so when we stopped at a 7-11 to fill up with gas, we grabbed some snacks to hold us over. This bus wasn't going to get into town before 5:00pm (instead of 12:00pm as scheduled), so we would just have to make due.
When we arrived in Bangkok, the bus just pulled to the side of the road and dropped us off. There was no bus terminal and we weren't really sure where we were. The hostel had said that it should cost around $100 Bhat to get there from the bus stop, so we were confused when all of the cabs wanted $300 Bhat to take us. The real issue though, was that none of the cabs even knew where it was. We had an address, but it was in Thai which many of the drivers couldn't read. After four failed attempts of talking to cab drivers, we decided we needed to find some internet so that we could have better directions to explain the hostel location. Of course, we couldn't find internet either. We wandered around for a good 20 minutes before an Israeli man selling tours on the street spotted us and offered to let us go up to his restaurant and use the wifi for free. This was incredibly nice of him and I was so tired from our journey that I couldn't have been more grateful. We got a map and directions and headed back down to find a cab. The cabs would not negotiate on price so we were told to walk down to a part of town where the cabs aren't just sitting and waiting for fares, as they are often more likely to go down in price. We stopped two different cabs and they still wouldn't go lower than $300. I was almost didn't care how much it was anymore, I just wanted to get there and get the giant bag off of my back. Finally a tuk tuk pulled up and agreed to take us for $200. We had been told that tuk tuks wouldn't drive that far of a distance but this guy insisted that it was fine, so we hopped in. It soon became clear that our driver had absolutely no clue where he was going and was very likely insane. He would constantly chatter to himself and laugh hysterically. We were relieved to be off the street but since he had to stop about six times to ask people where our hostel was located, we knew it would be a long drive to get there. Finally after many wrong turns, we arrived at "Siam Journey Hostel". It was practically hidden in a back alley and was nestled among local residences. This was kind of nice because it was a safe, quiet family neighborhood.
We checked into our four-bed girls dorm on the third floor. The place was small but nice. There were two other girls staying in our room and the one we met right off the bat was very nice but a little too chatty for people who had been traveling for 48 hours. We tried to decompress a bit in the room but since we saw that was unlikely to happen, we decided to venture out in search of food. The guy who worked at our hostel was ironically from San Diego. We asked him about taking the metro to get to a restaurant that we had looked up, but he insisted that we shouldn't take the metro and that we should just walk to food near there. After such a rough few days, all I wanted was some Mexican comfort food and we were going to take the metro no matter what! Luckily, there was a metro stop right down the street and it was incredibly easy to use. Thailand was SO much more modern than Cambodia or Vietnam and we were taken aback but how nice everything was.

We got off the metro and wandered until we found "La Monita". I was excited to have some Mexican food (even though it seemed absurd in Thailand) because I knew once our friends arrived, they would only want to eat Thai food. We sat outside and both got delicious burritos- I was quite happy. After dinner, we headed back to the hostel to try and rest up in anticipation of meeting our friends the following morning. I had every intention of sleeping in and texted them to let them know we would contact them as soon as we woke up.

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