Solo Travelling - Week 1 - Bangkok and Sukhothai

 

·        Bangkok view from Golden Mountain

·       Day 0

·        After all the many and lovely goodbyes, I was finally off, waving my last one to a tearful mother as I strode into the next chapter of my life as you do through airport security. As I am a nervous flier the part of my trip that I was most worried about was in fact the next 15 hours I was about to spend cruising at 30,000 feet. Fortunately, my flights were really comfortable (living it up on Emirates) and my flight anxiety turned to OMG I’m actually doing this anxiety very quickly.

·        Day 1

·        Arriving in Bangkok was an intense first encounter to Thailand, the heat, the smells, the vibrancy and size of the city was all quite overwhelming never mind the horrific feeling of it being 5am my time with little sleep on the plane and it being 1pm Bangkok time. A nap was needed but I was staying in a party hostel so that maybe seemed like a long shot. After checking in, showering, readjusting I done what should always be done when arriving in a new country grab a beer and some scran.

Thai Red curry with sticky rice. Chang > Singha I discovered after this.

One beer led to many at the bar in the hostel. The hostel was a really good vibe which made it easy to chat away to everyone and anyone. Never mind the fact the conversation was so easy asking about what peoples travel plans are, who they were, what they did etc etc! A bit of liquid courage did help to sooth the nerves of being solo I must admit.

Day 2

Of course, this resulted in a brutal hangover to kick off my first full day in Bangkok. So I decided to take it easy…  by walking 32,459 steps exploring as many temples as I could hitting all the major spots I wanted to see, and sampling as much street food as I could manage. I was burning off the calories anyway! The temples I explored included the grand palace which was nice and is the major tourist attraction temple to visit in Bangkok, but it was way too crowded and roasting as I had to wear trousers to be respectful.

  

Grand Palace - Bangkok

 As I would soon discover I am going to spend most days being a sweaty mess. The other temples I visited that day were much more impressive in my eyes, Wat Pho – the temple of the reclining Buddha which is made of 5 and a half tonnes of solid gold and being 46 metres long was much more exciting to me. However the rest of Wat Pho was what I enjoyed the most, containing lush gardens and smaller temples, it was a nice escape from the hustle and bustle of the streets outside.

Giant reclining Buddha

After my temple hopping excursions, I rode a tuk tuk back to my hostel and obviously signed up for the beer pong tournament – as I said I was in a party hostel.

Day 3

I signed up for a day of visiting markets featuring the floating market and train market. This was a great day out; I got to meet loads of nice people on the bus and to explore aspects of Bangkok I found interesting. The floating market – which is a man-made structure made in 1866 was originally constructed to connect the Mae Klong and Tha Chin rivers and was traditionally used as a trade route, but has now with most things in Thailand became a tourist hotspot. 

Floating Market

Here I got to take a ride on a boat, featuring a custom engine which had some major mad max vibes to it, then sampled some boat noodles which I poured a small spoonful of chillis into which killed me, and resulted in many Thai people laughing at me as I sweated away asking for water.

Check that engine!!

The train market – was fine, don’t really have much to say about – yeah a train comes through at 2mph and everyone gets there phone out to video it (me included) but aye a bit underwhelming.

Train market

 The bus dropped us off at the highest building in Bangkok which cost 30 quid to go up, so I did not bother. From here I took the metro and train back, it felt so weirdly liberating to be floating in a sea of people, in a city of millions, thousands of miles from home with the opportunity to do basically whatever I wanted. So I went to the ladyboy strippers………..joking, I went home and fell asleep for 14 hours.

Day 4

Bangkok was over for me, I’d had fun, met a lot of people but I was ready to leave. I’d just felt gubbed the whole time there and I knew my next destination was much more up my street. Sukhothai – the first capital of Thailand created in 1238. However this day I would not be exploring it, I would be sat on a bus for 7 hours sooo that was basically this day for me.

Day 5

I signed up for a cycling tour of the old city which involved 20km of cycling in a group with a Thai guide.

My wheels

This was my favourite day so far – seeing the old and quiet temples was amazing, the city includes many Buddhist (as you’d expect) and Hindu temples which had been built over 100s of years.

Sukhothai – Buddhist and Hindu Temples

It is a UNESCO world heritage site which means no more reconstruction of the temples can be undertaken and they have to be preserved as is. Due to this loads of the Buddhas heads have fallen off as that is the weakest part of the clay/cement they are made out of.

Basement Jaxx

We got provided with lunch from a local restaurant/stall/open air space not sure what I would call it and had a lovely conversation with my group comprising of a 40 something Mexican Woman, a retired German couple in their 70s, two lesbian 50 year old woman from Paris and myself a 26 year old Scotsman – an interesting ensemble.

Day 6

I’m counting this as my final day of week 1 as today was another 7 hour bus journey to my next destination – Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai was the place I was most looking forward to visiting in Thailand, so going to write up about that in another post – if I keep doing this. Will see how it goes!

Miscellaneous

Just some notes of my experience so far:

• I am too tall for Thailand, I hit my head everywhere and everyone pisses themselves when it happens. Aye just cause your small mate
• I have no concept of time, I just have a rough idea of when I need to get my next bus, and I also feel like I’ve been away for months not a week!
• I have no concept of money, am I under budget, am I overbudget (probably) will I spend time to figure it out – nope
• I’ve had three Thai massages, and tell you what they sort you out, only 300 bhat (like 7 quid) too!
• Getting on the back of a moped for a taxi is terrifying
• The food is incredible – every meal has hit
• Even when beer is so cheap my Scottish stinginess still kicks in when I see a beer for over 120 Bhat, that’s £2.70, of course I still buy it but come on! Around 90 Bhat is what I’m after
•  The main thing I’ve found is everything I was worried about before coming, all my anxieties over the flight, the food, getting scammed, getting robbed (still time for this), the people, the language, being away from home, the spiders, the snakes, would I meet people, was I prepared, visas, border crossings, transport etc etc etc  - none of these have been an issue and the only thing that’s given me any form of anxiety so far…. are my hangovers.