August proved to be a great month that just didn’t last long enough. What made it great was being able to spend three weeks with my beautiful girlfriend, Lucie. It all started on her birthday. Rather than stay at home celebrating with her family and friends, she travelled 13,000 kilometres to Thailand! I had to make my way to Bangkok to meet up with her for her arrival, but I didn’t want to take the eight to nine-hour bus ride south, so I chose to fly. After finishing my morning teaching, I got home quickly, grabbed my bag, and called a taxi. I had a little more than an hour to get to the airport for check-in. As I waited for the taxi, I was watching the time pass by. This made me stress and wonder if I would make it on time. Finally, I gave up on the taxi and headed over to the coffee stand I go to and asked for help. The owner started to ask the neighbours if they knew the number for a taxi but that proved unsuccessful. Instead, he offered to drive me to the shopping centre where he knew there would be a taxi stand. At the stand, I called for another taxi. Again, I was waiting and watching the time disappear. Running out of patience, I headed around the building to see if I could see a taxi at another door. But a new solution appeared; there was a group of motorbike taxis. So I headed over to them and got one of them to drive me to the airport. I arrived a few minutes after they had closed the check-in counter, but they were nice enough to check me in and reminded me to be on time the next time. 3 hours later I was in Bangkok taking a taxi to the hotel.
I arrived at the hotel early so I could surprise Lucie as she was expecting me to arrive around 8 pm. Even with the hotel booking in her name, I was able to check-in and settle into our room. I enjoyed the quiet afternoon on the comfy bed, as I only had to wait for her arrival. Finally, by early evening, she messaged me that she had landed in Bangkok. By calculating the time it would take her to get through the airport and then travel to the hotel, I had an idea of when she would arrive. As evening turned into night I started to question what was taking so long… her flight had been delayed but not by much and I thought there could be a bit of traffic on the highway. So, I continued to wait.It had been a few hours since she landed and I started to receive messages from her mother asking if she had met up with me. Finally, around 9 pm I heard someone at the door, it opened up and in she walked! Once we got her bags in, I had one of the best hugs I have ever had!!! We had a quiet night in as she was exhausted from travelling and I had what seemed like an extremely long week. Lucie was up early the next morning and when she finally got me up we headeddown for breakfast before heading out for the day. We had planned to visit some of the tourist attractions and so we took the sky train and then switched to the river taxi. We got off at what I thought was the right stop, which ended up being wrong as we were on the wrong side of the river. Luckily, transportation in Bangkok is quite easy, so we jumped on the ferry and transferred to the other side. Our first stop was the Wat Pho or ‘Reclining Buddha.’ These temples have strict dress codes out of respect to the Buddhist religion, soLucie had to wear a cardigan. I felt bad for her, and she didn’t like it either because it was a hot, sunny day. After spending some time at the Wat Pho we made our way towards the Grand Palace. As we tried to find the entrance, a man approached us to try to help us. Heinformed us that the Palace was closed due to it being the Queen’s birthday. He thenpulled out a map and started to show us another temple we could visit. He informed us that it’s only open on certain days of the year, this day being one of them. As he showed us, he told us of other places to see. With each new place, we tried to continue walking,but he kept pushing for us to go. It got to the point where he called over a tuk-tuk and arranged that the driver would take us to 3 places for 100 baht. It was a good deal and eventually, we gave in and jumped into the tuk-tuk. The temple he suggested was Wat Intharawihan, which is a 32-meter standing Buddha. We were interested to see it, only to find that it was under renovations - which sucked! After this temple, the tuk-tuk driver took us to the next location, which was a Thai tailor shop for men’s suits, and because it was a holiday there were good deals, but we insisted on moving on to the last place. The last place was a street lined with shops selling silver. That didn’t interest us either, so we got off and started to walk down the street looking for a restaurant for lunch. Lunch came at a good time as an afternoon rainstorm was just starting. After lunch, and as the rain stopped, we began to find our way back towards the Grand Palace. Using a small printed map, we navigated the streets until we got back to the river. We jumped on the river taxi and headed back towards our hotel. Rather than taking the sky train, we found the road we needed to walk back. When we got back to the hotel, we had to arrange our return trip to Mae Sot for the following day. I spent an hour or so with the hotel booking our bus tickets, which was for a later bus than we had hoped but it gave us another day in Bangkok. We spent our evening napping, relaxing and enjoying a simple meal we got at a 7-11. In the morning, we chose to take it easy. We had breakfast at a cute café across the street. I don’t think they get many foreigners as the owner’s mother offered us varioustasters. We got to try Thai popcorn that is sweet rather than salty and she also offered us a cookie. After breakfast, we headed back to the Grand Palace, as that was the main place we wanted to visit. There was a long queue, so we got in line and waited. When we got to the front, we realized it was for a security check. It made sense, considering it was a Palace, but we panicked when we realized we needed our passports. I didn’t have mine on me but luckily they accepted my driver’s license. We got through and made our way to the Palace entrance and saw the changing of the guards. We then saw signs that the Palace was closed for the Queen’s birthday. Before we could cross the street to find a place with Wi-Fi and figure out a new plan, there was a military band that formed up in front of us and began playing as they marched into the Palace. Our new plan involved lots of walking and seeing some new places, like the Giant Swing and the Golden Mountain Temple. The Golden Mountain was beautiful and the views that it offered were amazing! From there, we began making our way back toward the Grand Palace to find a place to eat. As we walked back, we started to see large crowds along the streets. We found out that there was going to be a parade that evening not only for the Queen but also for Mother’s Day – as they both coincide. There was a massive sea of sky-blue t-shirts as people were waiting for the parade. As we were walking, someone once again stopped us and we thought ‘here we go again.’ He turned out to be a school headmaster and told us about the parade. The catch finally came when he told us about the floating market and how you could get a boat cheaply and as he was telling us about this he started to call over a tuk-tuk. This time we managed to stand our ground and pushed onwards to the riverside. We made our way back to the hotel, stopping at an open-air shopping centre and picking up dinner. Once at the hotel, we grabbed our bags, got in our taxi and headed to the bus station. Finally, we got on our bus in the late evening and began the 8-hour bus ride to Mae Sot. Stay tuned for Part 2 and 3.
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