Bangkok & Ayutthaya

After our 26 hour adventure, we finally arrived in Thailand just after midnight on Sunday night / Monday morning local time (we left Jacksonville, Florida at 10:15am on Saturday). There is an airport rail link that takes you into the city from 6am - midnight each day, but we obviously got in too late for that. We took a taxi to our hotel for the equivalent of about $16. The cab fares are extremely reasonable there so we used cabs as our main mode of transportation. We recommend making sure they use their meters on each trip vs. just throwing out a number. We found you're likely to pay less using the former strategy.

We finally checked into Banyan Tree Hotel - the perfect first spot for our trip. We found a great deal for this hotel via JetSetter and were extremely happy with the choice. Everyone was so nice - greeting you with a Sawadee ka / Sawadee krup (hello for female & male, respectively), and a slight bow with hands pressed together (like someone is praying). The hotel had an awesome rooftop bar that's actually recommended in the tour books, and it had a great pool on an upper level floor with great views of the city. We definitely recommend this hotel. (It came with a big buffet breakfast each morning, too.)

Our first morning we were ready to tackle the town and see several of the main Wats. As we were about to leave, we learned that streets around the main temples were closed due to the Princess' funeral, and the temple known as the most important in Thailand, Wat Phra Kaew (the home of the Emerald Buddha), was closed. The princess died July 2011, but they just cremated her body the day prior and had her official funeral our first day in Thailand. I believe it has something to do with the Buddhist culture? 

The funeral caused us to adjust our plans a bit which wasn't a problem. We were able to take a cab to catch a boat that took us to several of the other temples that were open. We wanted to go on a canal cruise anyway, so this was perfect. We saw Wat Pho, the largest temple in Bangkok and home of the reclining Buddha. What a site to see! This was one of my favorite temples. The Buddha was enormous (46 meters long and covered in gold leaf). Its feet alone were three meters long and decorated in mother-of-pearl. Hopefully these pictures will give you an idea of how large it was.

We also saw Wat Arun which was beautiful as well. It's located on the west bank of the Chao Phraya River. It was really interesting to see these Buddhist temples; I don't believe I have ever seen anything but a Christian place of worship. At many of the temples we saw people worshiping the Buddhas which was also a first for me - I'm not sure that I have ever seen someone worshiping someone other than the God I believe it.  

In Thailand they demand respect in the temples, so they require proper dress to visit. Women are expected to wear long skirts or dresses (at least to the knees ), and cover their shoulders. Men are expected to wear pants. Both are expected to wear closed toe shoes, even though at each temple you are required to take off your shoes. You aren't allowed in if you don't have the appropriate dress, or, they will give you (or charge you) for a wrap to wear while you are inside the temple. It was extremely hot, so we tried to wear cooler things as we were exploring and bring cover ups / items that would make our dress appropriate for the temples. Some of the temples were more relaxed on the dress code and you'd see some tourists not wearing the appropriate attire, but out of respect for the local culture, we tried to follow their customs.
Speaking of customs, we researched several before our trip, including - a woman should lower her head when she passes a monk and step off the sidewalk as the two should not touch, you're not supposed to pose in front of a Buddha for a picture, and you're not supposed to step over someone or their belongings. 

We also made it to Chinatown where we tried street food from a vendor. We were warned about this before our trip because their water isn't safe and sanitation standards are quite different from ours, so we were careful what we tried. We went with some deep fried dumplings. If you see the food cooked in front of you and it has steam coming from it, it's generally safe. Our first (and only street food) was a good choice, too! We had intentions of trying more, but after seeing some of the food outside waiting to be cooked with flies swarming around, and after the warnings we received prior to our trip, we were a bit hesitant to be too adventurous with our food choices. Brian was more adventurous than me - I had a lot of pad thai and fried rice!

After a long, hot day of exploring, we took some time to enjoy our hotel pool which was a great way to end the day. For dinner, we went with a restaurant in our hotel called Saffron. It's on the 52nd floor of the hotel and has panoramic views of Bangkok. After dinner we took advantage of our rooftop bar. As you might expect, it was extremely overpriced, but we were paying for the view and the experience and it was well worth it. 

                                           

The next day we had plans to catch a train from Bangkok to Ayutthaya (the old capital of Thailand), but first took a cab over to see where Brian's mom went to school. It's a different school now, but the building is still the same. We were able to take some pictures and walk the same street Brian's mom did years ago. We also walked down the street where she grew up. We're so glad we had that opportunity. 

Ayutthaya - where things got exciting
Up to this point our trip had been pretty smooth sailing. Our flights were on time, we were happy with our hotel, and we were feeling good about our trip so far. Then we went to the train station to catch a train to Ayutthaya (where we were going to catch an overnight train to Chiang Mai, but wanted to explore the old capital of Thailand first). Per our research, the train was supposed to leave roughly every hour and take an hour and 45 minutes to get to Ayutthaya in a basic, but clean 3rd class seat for less than the equivalent of a dollar per person. Apparently our research was wrong and the "express" train like I described above only runs twice a day (leaving about a half hour before we arrived, and five or so hours later).

The other option was a train with no air conditioning and standing room-only that took three hours to get to Ayutthaya. We didn't really like any of our options, so the guy at the train station we were talking to about the train schedules offered to get his cab driver friend to drive us to Ayutthaya for a negotiated rate of about $50. We decided to go for it.

The guy in the train station made the deal with the cab driver, we put our bags in the car and we were off! It was supposed to take about an hour and a half, so after about an hour and 45 minutes with no Ayutthaya in sight, Brian started to notice signs for Pattaya, a beach town south of Bangkok (in the complete opposite direction of Ayutthaya), so he asked the cab driver how much longer. After a very interesting exchange of Brian repeating "Ayutthaya" and the cab driver saying "Pattaya" which apparently has a silent "P" and sounds a lot like "Ayutthaya", we discovered we were in fact being taken to the wrong city in the complete opposite direction of where we wanted to go!

We didn't really know what was in store for us at that point, but after a lot of frustrated noises from the cab driver, an angry phone call to his "friend" at the train station, and a quick fill up at a gas station, we were going probably double the speed limit and on our way to Ayutthaya after a nearly two hour detour! At that point we figured all we could do was laugh about it. The cab driver felt the same way, so throughout the drive he made several phone calls apparently telling the story and laughing.

We had plans to rent bikes in Ayutthaya and bike around to explore the different temple ruins before we needed to catch our overnight train. We were running very late at this point and we felt bad the cab driver was in the middle of the misunderstanding, so we ended up paying him extra to take us on a tour of the different attractions. At the end of the day, he dropped us off at the train station, we gave him a generous tip, and we were all happy, and had an interesting story to share!

The train station in Ayutthaya was not at all what we expected. It was all outdoors with no air conditioning and no options for dinner. We had a couple of hours to kill, so we found a restaurant in our tour book and had a Tuk Tuk take us there. It turned out to be one of our favorite restaurants of the entire trip. It was called Pae Krung Kao and it was right on the river. It had big beers, good food, and a cool view - just what we needed after our crazy day! Our table was on a floating dock on the river which definitely added to the experience.

5th Anniversary Trip to Thailand!

We can hardly believe it, but Brian and I have been married five years already! We wanted to do something big for this milestone anniversary. (Well, we thought it would be a good excuse to go on a big trip...) We've had Thailand on our travel list for some time - we know several people who have been and loved it, and Brian's mom lived there with her family when she was in middle and high school. She lived all over the world, and Thailand was her favorite. All of this was enough reason for us to check it out ourselves!

We talked to people who have been, and did some research ourselves, and came up with the following itinerary - Bangkok, Ayutthaya, Chiang Mai, and Railay Bay. All in all it was an amazing trip. We were able to see where Brian's mom grew up and went to school, visited a lot of amazing Wats (temples), rode elephants, went hiking up waterfalls, participated in the Songkron Festival (the Thai new year celebrations), went to the largest outdoor market in the world, went snorkeling in the Andaman Sea, and renewed our wedding vows on one of the world's most beautiful beaches. We packed a lot into our two week trip, but had an amazing time.

Logistics
I've been saving Delta Skymiles since 2005 when I took my first international trip to Europe for my study abroad program. After nearly seven years, I finally had enough for a flight to a far away land! As you might expect, it proved to be difficult to find a flight and actually use the miles, but we eventually made it work. I recommend calling the airline directly to find out what flight options are available because flights with their partner airlines don't show up online. We were able to get a much better flight, for less Skymiles by flying Delta domestically and Korean Air internationally. We flew from Jacksonville to Atlanta on Delta, and then from Atlanta to Seoul, South Korea and Seoul to Bangkok on Korean Air. We really enjoyed Korean Air - everyone was extremely friendly; the customer service was phenomenal. I think a large part of this is the Asian culture - in general, from our experience, they just seem to go the extra mile for you.

The flights weren't as bad as we anticipated. The flight from Atlanta to Seoul was about 14 hours, and the flight from Seoul to Bangkok was about 5 hours. The entire trip from the time we left Jacksonville until the time we landed in Bangkok was 26 hours. The long flights had individual TVs in each of the seats with movies, games, music, etc. So between that, reading material, food, and naps, the flights went by much more quickly than we anticipated.

One difficult thing with Korean Air is you can't book your seats online. You have to call within one month of the flight and request specific seats. We booked my flight through Delta to use the Skymiles and wanted to book Brian's through them also, but it was going to cost about five times as much to do so, so we booked through Cheaptickets.com. (I'm not quite sure why or how much sense that makes, but oh well...) Since we booked through two different venues, it proved to be somewhat difficult to ensure we had seats together, requiring five or so calls to Korean Air and a lot of frustration. At the end of the day, after giving our sob story of it being our anniversary trip and being heartbroken if we weren't able to sit together, we did get seats next to each other AND Korean Air had an anniversary cake for us on our way to Asia! We tried to look at the seat map on SeatGuru.com to figure out the best seats and request those, but something went awry and we missed the "best" seats by a couple of rows on each flight. Bummer! Oh well, we survived and somehow managed to have a row to ourselves on each of the flights going to Asia, but not so much on the way back.

One more note about the flights - apparently, what "class" flight is booked determines whether or not you'll get frequent flier miles for the trip. We were excited because we thought Brian would get 20,000+ Skymiles for this trip (getting us another free flight in the near future), but apparently when we booked through Cheaptickets.com we booked the "class" that wasn't eligible for Skymiles. A bit ridiculous if you ask me. Cheaptickets doesn't post the class before you book, so we had no way of knowing that would be the case. We complained afterward and all we ended up with was a wasted hour on the phone and a $50 credit from Cheaptickets (which they gave us a hard time about using when we tried to cash it in). So the moral of the story is - you have to call Cheaptickets before booking a flight to make sure the class you're booking is eligible for frequent flier mile credit.

So with that, I'll leave you with a some pictures from each of the cities and will break the rest of the trip into separate posts about the various cities.