We’ve discussed Saigon. We’ve discussed Phuket. Now we’re onto the next part of the trip… in the Capital city of Thailand: Bangkok. (Yes, that’s the name)
We woke up again to the view on the tropical Thai beach. After grabbing a quick breakfast, we spent most of the morning packing up and getting ready to leave for Bangkok. We packed our bags and left the hotel, encountering Adan as well as his other friend, Nathan. After briefly conversing, we entered the car and looked out at the Phuket Island countryside. We arrived at the airport and began the long process of checking in. I don’t remember much about the process, but it was pretty lengthy. When we finally reached our gate, there were still a couple hours before we could board. Because of this, we went to get lunch, which we easily got at one of the airport’s millions of restaurants.
Even after eating, the plane wasn’t ready for boarding. And being teenagers in the 21st century, we solved our boredom the only way we knew how: electronics. Everyone started scrolling through their phones. I discovered that YouTube shorts was a thing around this time.
It wasn’t until around 2PM that we finally boarded the plane
. And once again, here’s the takeoff video:
We flew up into the clouds and I took my last look at the tropical island— then we were flying back over the ocean again. Then we reached the Thai mainland, where we flew for a short several minutes over the isthmus and once again were flying back over the Gulf of Thailand. We didn’t do much this flight— just chilled out until eventually I saw land. We’re approaching Bangkok, I thought, and I pulled out my phone to record as we approached the land. I actually decided to keep this recording, and here it is…
On a map, you’ll typically see Bangkok is very close to the coast. I immediately assumed this meant that we were going to land within the next few minutes; I was wrong. It turned out that it was going to be quite some time before we reached the airport. I recorded for two minutes after we reached the land, and eventually decided to stop and wait several more minutes until we were visibly closer to the airport.
For the next twenty minutes, I repeatedly started and stopped recordings on the Thai mainland. I wanted to get the landing at the right recording, and eventually I got it. At the same time, I preserved many of the recordings just before we landed at the airport, and so instead of one landing recording, you get three of them that really give a detailed impression of Bangkok.
After we got out of the plane, we did all the checking out stuff that I’m not going to bore you with before we finally looked for a taxi (Once again, we used the app Grab. Seriously, if you’re going to travel in Southeast Asia this app is a must. I still have the app on my phone, although it doesn’t work well outside of Southeast Asia.)
After navigating through the airport’s complex interior and finally making our way to the car pickup zone. After struggling for several minutes to find a taxi, we finally entered one and began the drive to our hotel.
The drive was surprisingly long. Through the drive, I got a really good look at all the different buildings in Bangkok which was really interesting. We drove on what appeared to be a really important street in the Bangkok city. It was large, grand, and even had this “second story” to it which accommodates for more cars and a train. Then we turned into a narrow alley.
The alley didn’t seem important at first. There were a few stalls for people who sold their products there and it was populated with houses and then…
Behind it was a huge hotel. This thing was actually massive. It had a whole yard in front of it as well as huge accommodation space for the cars. It was like a hidden gem in the middle of a sea of gray buildings.
We entered the building and checked in to our hotel. After using the restroom and scrolling on our phones for a few minutes, my dad came back out of the hotel room and walked out to us. Then we were told to get on a golf cart? What? The golf cart immediately began to move us away from our hotel.
Now I was really confused. Why were we heading away from the hotel? We didn’t even see our room yet…
Then we stopped in front of another building, and we were told to take our bags out and head into this new one.
It was at that moment I realized we were staying in a muilti building hotel… this was a huge area that was meant for tourism, not just one structure. It was almost as if we were staying in a resort, but instead of a beach resort, we were in a resort in the middle of a sea of buildings.
The Phuket hotel room was a two story room with a hot tub, several beds, living rooms, TVs, room service, and balconies. And it wasn’t too expensive for its luxuries either (In general, just about anything in this part of the world won’t be as expensive as it is in the States or in Europe). The Bangkok place gave us two separate hotel rooms which were connected by a private hallway. Each hotel room consisted of a huge bedroom (Which included a bed, plenty of storage, and TVs), a huge bathroom (Huge shower spaces, toilets with plenty of room) and huge living spaces (Plenty of space to have meals and chill out). Honestly, this hotel suite could have just been a house.
By this point, it was already nearing night time, and everyone wanted dinner. It was decided that we would head to a nearby mall in order to get dinner. We walked down to the mall back on the main street (About 15 minutes away from our hotel) and it was decided that the kids would get to go their own way and do what they wanted while the adults ate on their own as well. Me, Casey, Adan, and a new character named Charleton (Who is also heading into his freshman year, about my age) all were given about 1000 baht (about 30 bucks in American money) to spend on whatever we’d like.
After walking around for a while, we went ahead and settled on a ramen restaurant in which we all paid a very low price of just a couple hundred baht for a bowl of ramen. Most of us got the warm, good thing, but Adan for some reason bought the cold ramen and was constantly begging the rest of us to dip in our warmer portions. We also bought a can of soda while we were at it.
As we ate, Casey got bored. He started craving the use of a phone, probably due to the fact that everyone else had one (Except I wasn’t using mine cuz I’m better) He eventually reached for my phone when I was half not expecting it, and he went a little too quick, as he ended up spilling his own coke on the floor which got a lot of my stuff and his stuff wet. In retaliation, me, Adan, and Charleton all forced— I mean politely asked him to pay for all our meals. He reluctantly— I mean willingly complied and paid for everything, bringing his 1000 baht total to about 200. We started walking around the mall. As we did, Charleton basically replenished Casey’s stores, bringing Casey’s money total back to around 800. At this point, we all got pretty tired and decided to sit down at a restaurant which sold fries. We all sat down to order some and started eating. Casey, who was without a phone and was therefore bored, decided to entertain himself by walking into store next to ours.~
Casey, who had already shown his interesting personality during our ramen conversation, entertained us in that store. We all watched him enter the store, which sold literally everything that our money couldn’t buy. It sold computers, these fancy gadgets, and iPhones from the next century. We all watched in amusement (and slight concern) as he started to survey the walls of technology and began to grab every single thing he saw. We watched as he appeared carrying a buttload of loot in his arms and continued to get more. Shortly after, one of the store’s employees started following him. Despite the fact that he could get in a lot of trouble for this, I couldn’t really stop myself from laughing.
Then the employee started talking to him. I don’t know what they said— I was way too far away to hear their conversation, but I was pretty sure he was in trouble. Ten seconds later, Casey exited the store with all the things he bought. Yep, another crazy Casey thing.
For around 20 dollars, Casey bought a mouse, a microphone, and an iPad. (He later got rid of the iPad because it was “trashy”) This did not leave my head at all and it’s still something that I laugh about from time to time.
And he still wasn’t done with his clown job that night. Throughout the remainder of our walk around the mall, he continued to stray from the path and ran around dancing. Eventually, we passed by a hair-dying station which offered pink hair dye. Apparently Casey still had the money for it, so he was really excited to try that out. After holding him back, we found another restaurant (this one served Asian food I believe) that Adan and Charleton wanted to try. By that point, I was already full so I just sat down and did nothing. Casey, on the other hand, ran off to the hair station to get some pink hair. I decided to run off and chase him for a while until we eventually ended up back at the restaurant. By this point, our parents had caught up to us and we were all pretty tired. It was decided to go home for the day.
And tomorrow, the Bangkok exploration begins…