十 | Thailand Part 2

October 4th, 2016

So adventure number one was to the Chattuchak Weekend Market. We took Bangkok’s Mass Transit System to get there, which was fairly simple to navigate through and very crowded. It was about a 20-minute ride from our stay in Sukhumvit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boy oh Boyy the market is massiveeeeee! You can get lost and then get lost again and think you found your way and then get lost once again. You get what I mean. The market is basically an infinite array of shops, and you can literally find any and everything in the world. It’s only open on the weekends from I believe 7am to 6pm, and you might need every minute of that time if you want to be able to shop considerately. As in, you want to take a look around at everything before you make your decision on what to buy. You can find everything from home goods, clothing of course, kitchenware, spices, toys, handcrafted sculptures, just everything. It’s truly amazing. We arrived with only a couple hours to spare underestimating the size of this market not getting to shop as much as we would’ve liked, but I’ll be back.

Adventure number two was an all day tour of the Summer Palace and temples in Ayutthaya. We did a lot of sightseeing so just showing you these pictures will suffice.

The day ended with a fancy boat ride back down to Bangkok. Included was a buffet style lunch that was fantastical.

Adventure number three was a trip to Khao Yai National park. There were only 4 people for this all-day tour and our tour guide escorted us around in his SUV. The first part of this tour was a trip to a local market. We were having a Thai cooking lesson as apart of our scheduled day, so we went to pick out fresh native fruits and ingredients for our meal. The tour guide pointed out to us that the fruits and vegetables that you see with worms or bugs are usually the best ones, because they are without the pesticides.

We then headed to a farm in Amphoe Pak Phli where we got some insight on farm life and cooked our Thai style lunch. This might’ve been my favorite meal while in Thailand; I also got to try some new fruits. Dragon fruit was underwhelming, I was expected something booming with flavor because of the name but there was no taste. I forgot the names of the other fruit that also turned out quite tasteless. After finishing lunch we finally headed to the National Park. We hiked down to the waterfall that has a pretty interesting history with elephants. A group of elephants some years ago were following the sound of the waterfall at night, and with there line of sight they didn’t see that they were reaching the edge and all fell in one after another. It was pretty saddening to hear the story, as we were going to ride elephants next.

The highlight of my time here was of course riding an elephant. They’re definitely my new favorite animals, after having a whole lesson on elephants from our tour guide I’m a huge fan of their abilities. Our elephant ride wasn’t as pleasant the full way out though. Now that I look back at it, it’s quite a funny story. At the start of our ride it started pouring raining, and I mean the rain you see in the movies where it’s like someone’s dumping water from above. One part of the elephant’s route includes heading upstream a river. The water level started to rise, and at first the elephant was just so excited stopping and flipping its trunk up shooting water out. I thought it was cute at first but then it stopped listening to our guide’s commands when it was time to step out the river. It got whipped right on the top of its head and screamed out, I was hoping it wouldn’t get too upset and jump up sending us for a swim in the river. We finally get on land, and buddy here decides he doesn’t want to walk straight on the path. It’s walking so close to the edge of a cliff that would put us right back in the river. I started thinking back to the incident with the elephants in the waterfall. Our guide again had to get the elephant back on road and he finally started to behave. It was now my turn to take full control for the rest of the trail and it went pretty smoothly from then 🙂 .

Definitely an experience for the books.