I’m Lovin’ It

We’re back in the Big D! After a 30 hour trip home….yes, 30 hours. We left Bangkok at 2:30 in the morning the 17th (which is about 2:30 in the afternoon on the 16th here)….flew 5 hours to Seoul, Korea where we had a 6 hour layover. Then we flew from Korea to LA which was 10 hours. We had a 5 hour layover in LA then another 4 hour flight to Dallas where we landed at 11:00 pm on the 17th. It was pretty brutal! Kinda like the longest day of our lives. But we made it!

We had a great time in Thailand. I would love to go back at some point. It was such an easy place to visit mostly because the people are so friendly and helpful. They shocked us with their English speaking abilities and willingness to help. There are so many places (including the in U.S.) that as a tourist, you’re a target; we never felt like this in Thailand. People were actually trying to help, not sell you stuff (of course there were people selling stuff…but they understood “no” very well).

The country was beautiful! It’s very lush and we know why…the humidity is out of control! It was definitely hot as hell most of the time but it’s okay…we sweat our way through.

I’m going to split up the pictures in a couple posts. Maybe two posts of just a few pictures (out of the 1,056 that we took) to give you an idea of our trip. I’ll post another on the food since it deserves a post of its’ own :).

Here are some pics from our first few days in Bangkok:

Me realizing it’s too hot to wear your hair down…

This is the reclining Buddha. It’s a pretty famous one in Wat Pho (a temple) in Bangkok. It’s huge! I didn’t realize it was so big. It was actually one of my favorite sights in Thailand.

This is the Emerald Buddha also in Wat Pho.

There are Buddha images everywhere in Thailand! I mean everywhere. Even in the front of people’s houses. It’s pretty amazing.

These are just a couple of the many statues around Wat Pho.

Cliff with what I think is actually a chinese statue…

Ronald McDonald in Bangkok:

There are markets in Thailand everywhere. All sorts of markets too from food to clothes to flowers. Bangkok has a huge flower market that we visited with a friend who lives there. They had so many beautiful, exotic flowers. It’s crazy that it’s a nightly market. I’m curious who buys all these flowers?

I think these are associated somehow with Buddism. People hang them in their cars and on shrines outsides their homes.

Here’s me doing some serious bargaining on Khao San road. This street is the backpackers Mecca. It’s packed with foreigners. Not the yuppy kind, the type that have no problem sleeping on a mattress on the floor for 5 dollars a night.  It’s a great place for people watching!

After staying in Bangkok for a few days, we flew to Chiang Mai which is in the northern part of Thailand. Chiang Mai was much different than I thought it would be. For some reason, I thought it would be less tourists and more of a jungle feeling. It was definitely NOT less tourism. I’d say it was actually more than Bangkok, at least it felt like it.

It was still a very cool city. It had a laid back type of feel to it. Maybe a little too laid back. Prostitution was very much in your face in this city. But it’s so different than what you imagine. The prostitutes here don’t dress like prostitutes you might see in Vegas. They’re wearing “normal” clothes, just hanging out in the front of bars. I’m a little naive, if others hadn’t pointed it out, I’d probably just assume there were a lot of single girls in the area. It’s not an embarrassing job there like it might be here. It’s just another way to make money. Fair enough!

Here’s a tuk-tuk driver chillin’ out waiting for work. Tuk-tuks are basically three wheeled taxis.

Chiang Mai has a huge night bazaar every night. They sell everything! We went almost every night and picked up lots of goodies. That’s another plus about Thailand, it’s super cheap.

Some Thai dancing..

Our second day in Chiang Mai, we did a Thai cooking class and visited the tigers.

There were 8 of us in our cooking class group, mostly Europeans. It was really fun! It was nice talking with other people about their traveling adventures. A couple people have just been traveling the world basically until they run out of money. There’s a part of me that would love to do that. Just bum around traveling…something freeing about that.

On to the tigers! This was really fun. They’re just so pretty it’s really neat to see them up close. The small ones weren’t so intimidating, the big ones on the other hand….sort of scary.

You can see my timidness with the bigger tigers in the next few pics..

This is when he’s telling me that I’m tickling the tiger. I tried to ask what happens when you tickle them? He never answered. I assumed the worst.

I was a little nervous…but there were no problems! You’ll notice in this picture I’m not touching the tiger. The minute he turned and looked at me, I decided to leave him alone.

This is just halfway through our trip! I’ll do another post with a couple more pics including our elephant ride, Ayuthaya, the floating market, and back to Bangkok!

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite pictures from the trip.

This little chunkster was squirting people with a squirt gun. I didn’t mind since it was unbearably hot. I just loved her shirt: McDonald’s. Classic!