Three Nights in Bangkok - Part 2

On our final day, we were so tired. Tired of waking up early, tired of heaving our backpack around, tired of walking, tired of the heat, and just tired of being a tourist. It was hard moving around every few days and not ever feeling like we could just relax. We had to take it in take it in take it in and it finally hit us on our very last day.  We decided the best thing to do was to sleep in, enjoy breakfast at the hotel, go do one last round of shopping for souvenirs, and then have an awesome night on the town before our midnight flight. So we booked some tickets to the most famous ladyboy show in town (#10 on our list) and did some last minute shopping. We started at a duty free shop that was next to our hotel. Chaos. We had some coupons that they gave us to use and unfortunately, they didn't work on the one thing we wanted to buy (alcohol) so we were a bit out of luck.  We ended up giving them away then going to a market at a mall to finish to finish off all of our souvenir shopping. I was really wanting to find a rice hat to take home because I skipped out on getting one in Vietnam and Cambodia since I didn't want to carry it. Turns out rice hats are hard to find in Thailand...and I never found one :(

That evening, we started off by checking off #9 on our list of things to do in Bangkok...go to the Sky Bar at Lebua State Tower. Oh my was that a fantastic decision. We took the train down to the pier then walked up the street to the tower. This tower might seem familiar to you if you've seen the Hangover II...which is why Andrew was especially keen to visit it.  We got there at around 5pm...which was too early to go to the well known Sky Bar, so we went to Distil Bar, which was also at the top but had a different view. It was a beautiful bar, and the service was fantastic. They all know we're there just to go to the Sky Bar, but they were really helpful and nice, taking pictures for us and giving us advice on ordering our drink before we go over to the Sky Bar to avoid long lines. The view was spectacular and we were there at the perfect time. The sun was slowly setting and our drinks were divine. I had the hangovertini (amazingggg) and Andrew had some sort of fancy mojito which was delicious.  He wanted to try something else so I took over his mojito and he got some sort of redbull drink that I think was combined with a fine champagne...pretty much the best cocktails we've ever had. Which they should be considering they were about $20-30 each. But just like with the movie we saw, we were paying for the experience...and man was it an unforgettable one.

At around 6pm the Sky Bar opened up and we were one of the first ones in.  Wow what a view.  It was beyond gorgeous and we pretty much had it to ourselves at that moment. It was spectacular! The sun was setting, the cocktails were delicious, and we were saying goodbye to SE Asia. Pretty memorable.  We snapped a few photos, took it all in, and then headed down to go to our show...Calypso Cabaret.  The show is located at Asiatique, this touristy shopping center with restaurants.  We decided to eat there and stopped at a random restaurant that sounded good because we were both starting to get really hungry.  It was called the Why97 Club and Andrew was all funny because he realized our pretty waitress was definitely a man. That was the start of our fun evening haha. When we booked the tickets online, we let them pick our seats so we didn't know where we were sitting. When we arrived, they took us to our seats...at the very front and center of the theater.  Andrew was right aisle front...and totally embarrassed.

The show was fantastic!!! The "ladyboys" were unbelievable. You would never know that they weren't originally a female. The show consisted of many different acts, and there wasn't any nudity.  They lip-sang to a lot of different songs and there was dancing. It was fun! One ladyboy in particular (who pretty much looked like a man in drag) had a particular interest in Andrew. It was hilarious! He had 3 solo's and during the first one, he spotted Andrew.  Not hard considering he was the only man in the front.

 He came over in his first act as a Chiquita banana girl and sat in Andrews lap...oh dear.  Next act he was a geisha and he had his eye on Andrew the whole act - making everyone laugh every time he looked in Andrew's direction.  Then he came back over, sat on his lap, and gave him a BIG kiss! The whole crowd died laughing haha. The final act he was some strange blue something that looked Raggedy Anne like.  He came over again, gave Andrew the look, and Andrew threw up his hands going "no no no!" and the guy laughed, came over, and shook Andrews hand. The whole crowed laughed and cheered and then the show ended. As we were leaving everyone saw the big red kiss mark on his cheek and laughed and laughed saying "you're the guy!". Then we went and had a few pictures with all of the "ladies" and at the very end of the line, was Andrew's gal...she smiled and laughed and we got a great shot of them together. It was the best end to a fantastic trip.

So by the end of our 3 days in Bangkok, we were able to be lazy and still check off 7 of the 10 things on our list (unless you count #6 because we did that in Chiang Mai, then it was 8). We skipped the trip to Ayutthaya because it was a tad expensive and would have taken most of the day to do. We also skipped Nana Plaza because well...I'm just not in to that. No strippers and ping pong shows for me thank you. One regret is that we didn't get to see the big floating market in Bangkok.  It was far from everything and we didn't feel like spending the money at the time...but I think it would have been the perfect spot to go and get the last of our souvenirs.   Other then that - Bangkok, you were awesome. I can't wait to come back and visit again! South East Asia...I will be back.

Side Note:
As some of you may know, this trip was primarily sponsored by friends and family as our "wedding gift" in lieu of traditional gifts.  So I want to take a minute to say thank you to all that sponsored us going on this amazing trip of a lifetime. We really couldn't have done it without you and you helped us create some memories that will last forever. WE LOVE YOU!!!!!

Three Nights in Bangkok - Part 1

View from our AWESOME hotel

Bangkok is...well...Bangkok. It's HUGE! It's a crazy huge city with crazy energy. There is SO much to do in Bankgok and having only 3 days made us feel a bit overwhelmed. We reached out to our Thai friend and a friend of mine who spent a month in Thailand and tried to figure out a plan...because having only 3 days, you need some sort of a plan. They sent us a few ideas so I've condensed them in to a list of top 10 things just in case you're interested:

Top 10 Things to Do In Bankgok:

1. See a temple, one suggestion was Wat Po or the Grand Palace Temple

2. Check out the shitshow on Kaosan Road
3. Take a river taxi along the Chao Praya river
4. If you're tired of touring, see an English-soundtrack movie in "Gold Class" seating, and never be able to watch a movie in the USA again
5. Go to a night market and eat street food
6. Ride in a three-wheeled tuk-tuk, making sure you agree on the price (and destination) before you get in. Hang on for dear life!
7. Visit Nana Plaza hahahahahahaha (this advice came from a man...)
8. Go to Ayutthaya
9. Go to the Lebua State Tower at sunset and have a drink

10. Go to a ladyboy show (and this advice came from a woman...)

Only being their 3 days - we were not able to do all 10. So this is what decided to do...

Unfortunately our flight was delayed that morning, and took forever, so after landing and taking the train in to the city, we were pooped.  We hauled our packs up to our hotel, the Pullman King Power Hotel which was Andrew's pick (he picked all of our Thailand hotels and did a fantastic job!).  It was AMAZING! We looked like total bums walking in to this gorgeous 5 star hotel (for only $90 a night).  It was beautiful. There are 5 restaurants, 4 bars, and an infinity pool.  Out of sheer luck, we got upgraded to a room on the very top floor...high rollerrrrssssss! When we entered the room the tv displayed "Welcome Mrs. Patricia Hofland. We hope you enjoy your stay". Snap. We were all tuckered out so we decided to take a bath, get all dolled up, and have a date night, taking advice #4. We looked up places to see a VIP Gold whatever whatever movie and found the Paragon Cineplex theater that was at a giant mall...sounded promising. So off we went to figure out the train system (which was pretty awesome by the way). 

When we arrived at the Siam Paragon Mall we were pretty much in shock. That place was freakin HUGEEEEEEE! It is home to the largest aquarium in SE Asia, 16 theaters with the largest movie screen and seating capacity in Asia, an opera concert hall, an art gallery, bowling alley, gourmet market and huge food court, 10 stories and over 270 stores. Wow. We started the evening by purchasing our tickets to a showing of Fury (there weren't a lot of great options) for a hefty price of like $25 a piece, and yes that was in USD. However, we were there for the experience so we sucked it up. After purchasing our tickets we went down to the food court to check it out. Oh my amazing. I ended up getting a bunch of different dumplings from one of their little stands, including a durian dumpling which was disgusting. We also got our first bubble tea.

After a while of checking things out it was time for our movie so we went up to the VIP lounge to get our snacks and drinks that were included with our purchase. It's no american sized treat - but they were cute and I got a baby Ben and Jerry's ice cream so I was excited. The theater itself was filled with awesome leather lounge chairs all sectioned in to two's.  Each seat had a pillow and a blanket and reclined so that you could put your feet up and lay back. Pretty much...amazing.  After the previews (all in English but dubbed in Thai), the national anthem came on.  It always comes on
in every movie and you have to stand or else you look like a jerk. So that was interesting...especially since the country is going through their whole Marshall Law thing. Then the movie started and all was normal. The movie was good...but not $25 good haha.  However, if you're an avid movie-goer, you must have this experience. It was quite unique.

The next day was our touring day. We started the day with breakfast at our fantastic hotel. They had the best buffet ever! Fresh fruit, fresh pastries, real pancakes (most places made crepes instead of American pancakes), and fresh hot dumplings, noodles, and more. It was a dream.  After a big breakfast we caught a cab and went to the Grand Palace Temple, suggestion #1. We paid too much for our cab because they didn't sue the meter (which we learned later) but that was the least of our scamming worries haha.

When we arrived we were approached by a man who seeeeemmmmmeeeeddddd to be really nice. He gave us a map and said that unfortunately the temple didn't open until 12:00 so he suggested that we get a river boat and see the canals. Sounded fun, so we decided to go for it and check off to-do #3. He said that we needed to be sure we told the boat people that we "are living in Thailand", not visiting from the US, and he taught us how to say hello in Thai so that we wouldn't get "scammed".  Then he "called" us a tuk tuk and they dropped us off at a pier to "catch a boat". First thing they said was "hello" and so I answered "Sawasdee ka" (yes!) and Andrew said "Hello!" (no!) and they said "Oh, you speak some Thai"so I had thought I saved us. Then they asked "Where are you from?" and Andrew said "The United States". Fail. There went our we're from here so you can't scam us bit. So we haggled on a price for the boat and though it wasn't as cheap as we probably could have gotten it, Andrew still got it down to a price we were ok with...$20 for the boat ride. And it was a private boat. So we said sure. They took us all around the canals, even to a sad little floating market of 3 boats (haha).  It was pretty neat to see some of these homes on the water...barely being held up by wooden stilts that were eroding.  It lasted for a little under an hour and then they dropped us off at the pier in front of the Grand Palace Temple.

When we got off the boat we realized that though it was fun...we were definitely scammed...so we vowed not to listen to the "nice" people who "offer to help us". We walked through the crowds and little vendors set up along the street and got stopped yet again by someone who said "the temple is closed until 2:30pm, you should go to the blah blah temple instead, it's free today only" and yada yada. "No thank you" I said, as I dragged Andrew away haha. Once finally in the temple, Andrew had to borrow some pants because shorts were not acceptable. Luckily I was fine in what I was wearing.  We toured all around the temple and it was absolutely beautiful. Loved every minute of it! They had lovely paintings on the walls telling stories that I couldn't really understand since I didn't know the history of their religion...still gorgeous though. A few hours later we were pooped, I was getting hangry, and it looked like it was going to rain so we decided to grab some ice cream then head back to the hotel for a shower.  Andrew took to the streets to haggle for a cab that would take his 150 baht but after about 30 minutes of no luck, it started to rain, and luckily we found a tourist stand that called us a cab. It was $5 the first time we took a cab and "haggled" vs. only $2 to go back when the tourist services staff made them use the meter. Now we know.

That night we went out to do activity #2...check out Kaosan Road. Apparently it used to be a crazy time, but now that Marshall Law was enacted, it was pretty tame. It was like all of the other night markets we visited except this time the stuff they were selling was pretty crappy.  Very touristy stuff that didn't seem unique at all which sucked considering I still had people to shop for.  We did a bit of shopping, bought nothing, ate some curry, and got asked multiple times if we wanted to go to a "ping pong show" (ummmmm NO). Andrew got adventurous and ate a scorpion...gross...and then we decided to retire in because the trip was definitely wearing on us...we were so tired...but we still had one more day of adventures before we could call it quits...so off to sleep we went to prepare ourselves for our final day in SE Asia. 

Petting Tigers and Riding Elephants...Humane?

So as I mentioned in my last post, we did two super touristy things while in Chiang Mai.  The first was visit Tiger Kingdom and the second was supposed to be a trip to the Elephant Nature Park however, I never had time to book our spot so the park we originally wanted to visit was booked full.  After freaking out and almost changing our flight to make it work, we decided to just try a different elephant place which may or may not have been a mistake.

I'll start with our thoughts on Tiger Kingdom.  They claim on their website that the tigers are not drugged, and there hasn't been any sort of leak stating that their claims are false, so we decided to give it a go.  Andrew was veryyyyy hesitant about going because he felt like the tigers had to be drugged for people to be able to be in there with them, but I really wanted to do it so he said we could go. You had the option of playing with either the small babies, older babies, mid-sized tigers, and adult tigers.  The chick at the counter said we were more than welcome to watch the tigers for a while before deciding, so after checking out the few that we were allowed to watch for free, we determined that the baby tigers were the least likely to be drugged so we went for those. We had a bit of a wait before it was our turn so we walked around and checked out all of the other tigers. At that point, we began to question how humane this place really was.  A lot of the larger tigers were in small cages alone, which was really disheartening. Something you didn't see before paying.  We were hoping they would have had some large area for the tigers to roam or something - but nope.

When it was our turn to play with the babies, I will admit it was an amazing experience. They were really playful and loved playing with each other. It was quite hard to snap a good photo because they were so rambunctious which made me pretty happy to see that at least these guys weren't drugged.  Their fur was so soft...it was pretty much like playing with a large cat (like you would have guessed).  I think our overall conclusion was that though it was an amazing once in a lifetime experience, but we would leave it at that, once in a lifetime.  It is a strange situation because these poor animals don't really have an option. Out in the wild, they are caught and killed. However, being in a zoo or in this case, a petting zoo, really isn't that much better. So I guess it's up for you to decide what you think is best. If you go to zoo's you can probably handle this, but I wish they would have at least had some education on tigers and some more space for the bigger tigers...especially since they rake in so much money...but oh well.  

The next day was our day with the elephants at Baanchang Elephant Park. We started out feeling really good about it because the reviews were really good online and the company seemed to be pretty humane. They did have a disclaimer about how they used bull hooks on the elephants (which are the things animal cruelty people shout about) but they said they were only in case of emergency because the elephants are out in the open and can easily hurt someone if frightened (understandable). We showed up and got changed in to their little outfits then went to meet the elephants. We were in a smaller group of about 10 people and everyone in the group was really nice.  First we got to feed the elephants bananas and sugar cane which was really cool. They gave us some education on the elephants and the tour guide for the group, Jimmy, was fantastic. The elephants were all chained up at the foot which made us feel a bit sad but we were told it was for our protection because all of them are very greedy with the food, trying to snatch others, so it made sense.  Because man were they greedy haha...

After feeding them we learned how to ride them bareback which was awesome and MUCH better for them than those big chair things you can ride on them with.  After that we went on a little trek around the park and Andrew and I shared an elephant, taking turns being in the front. I was hoping we were going to see a big open space that they let them out when it's not feeding time, but no...turned out they were chained most of the day because a lot of them aren't "friends" so it isn't safe to allow them all out together. So that made us a bit sad. We all went in a big line and each elephants mahout (basically their trainer) came with them, standing next to them to make sure they were good. Most of the mahouts had a fantastic relationship with their elephant. You could see that they really loved them and bonded with them. Unlucky for us, we got stuck with the jerk. He seemed to be really mad at his elephant, yelling at her and threatening her with his bull hook when she went out of line. It made us both really uncomfortable...and then at one point he even took out a knife and threatened it. It was so weird because all of the other mahouts were really good to their elephants. Our elephant was one of the oldest, 40 years old, and she was pretty grumpy, but it was still no excuse for the mahouts behavior. Kind of soured the experience a bit for us.

After walking around, we got to bathe the elephant...Andrew did it because he wanted to give the elephant a bit of love, but after all of our mahouts yelling and threatening, I felt uncomfortable so I stayed back.  When it was all over, Andrew had a talk with Jimmy about our elephants mahout. At one point Jimmy said that they prided themselves on having great mahouts that never threaten their elephants with the bull hook...so we felt he needed to know.  He did seem to take the issue seriously which was good - and said he would talk to his boss. Fingers crossed the jerk got fired. When we were leaving we got to see a really adorable site.  We got to see the mahouts take the baby elephants and their mommys for their afternoon swim! Oh my were they so cute and happy. Made me feel better about our experience because most of the trainers there really did seem to love their elephants.

In conclusion, I think I would say stay away from those two attractions. Everyone says to go to the Elephant Nature Park if you want a good humane experience and I think that's probably your best bet. Just make sure that you book in advance because they do sell out - even on a Monday during the off season.  I wouldn't say we regret going to either, but I would say that we have mixed feelings. Yes we got to pet a tiger, yes we got to ride an elephant, but I think its better to donate funds towards a real conservation effort that has the animals best interest at heart. These groups were saving the animals from "worser fates" but they definitely made a pretty penny off of it...