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Trakanon Raider
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Ok, so my original trip was supposed to just be 2 weeks in Bangkok Thailand visiting my wives brother, with a few days in Chiang Mai. We decided that maybe we would end up murdering her family if forced to stay with them for two weeks, so decided to split our trip in half. We choose Japan... and then decided to increase our trip from 2 weeks to 3. Also, at my insistence, we each brought only one largish backpack.
Here is a rushed trip recap.
First night we basically just got to our Hotel and crashed.
Second day we walked the blocks all around our hotel just going into shops, eating, drinking, and checking stuff out.
Initial observations -
1. Everything is super clean
2. We can't communicate with anyone, even simple things require effort (my wife needed chopsticks, and our servers at a sushi bar had to be shown a picture, the word "Chopsticks" is not universal it seems, lol)
3. It feels super organised and safe
4. Everyone seems like they are sorry they can't help us, lol, just got a very friendly vibe everywhere
5. Everything is ADORABLE. If I lived here I don't think I would own a single thing that wasn't cute. My house would look like Pee-Wee's Playhouse for sure.
6. WE WANT TO DO EVERYTHING.
The rest of our 11 days there were filled with plans of "We are going to try and do all this stuff tomorrow" and then going to do the first thing on our list... and ending up just spending the whole day off the tracks with our plans to the wind. We did some touristy stuff - Checked out a museum, went to Disney Sea one day, checked out Tokyo Skytower (saw Mt Fuji from it), saw the Robot Restaurant show, saw some shrines, went to a teahouse, went to a cat cafe, walked around the Palace and a bunch of parks. We tried to hit up a lot of the random districts and things too, but man, we WASTED so much time and don't regret a second of it. I've never seen my wife so thrilled with a place, so I just kind of rode that and tried to keep that energy going. She wants to go into 30 stores to just look and not buy anything today? Cool, lets fucking do itttttttt. She wanted to go into an arcade at 4pm and stay until midnight? Sure thing. Spend $40 trying to win a garbage toy out of a claw machine, go for it.
It was just fun everyday, even if all we were doing was walking around a ton. Food was great, getting around was easy, people seemed super nice, and it was just easily the best city I've ever been to. I hate cities, and I did not want to leave. I could easily spend months there and see new shit every single day. Loved it.
Side note, we didn't know where we were going to want to be, or how hard it was going to be to get around, so I had only booked 3 days at the Gracery (about $120 a night) building when we got there, and 1 night at an APA ($64) hotel near the airport for our last night. The other 7 days we left open and figured we would play it by ear. We stayed 2 nights at a hotel (about $180 a night) over by Disney, and then decided lugging even our backpacks around wasn't awesome, and we had really liked the central location of Gracery, so we ended up re-booking 5 more nights there. However, our last night at the APA was REALLLLLLLLY close to the Gracery in terms of quality at half the price. It was a little smaller, but if I was going back I would totally save a ton of money by just staying at an APA, they were everywhere.
Then it was time to go to Thailand.
First thing- right off the plane, it stank like shit in the airport. I assumed they must be having a problem or something, but no, it turns out they have some disaster of a sewer system and everything just reeks of human shit. We were in a market, a massive market, and there was just trenches with grates over them where you could see the shit and piss slowly flowing under your feet like 2 feet down. I'm a pretty fucking hardy dude, I'm not easily bothered by inconvenience, but there were several times I was almost sick at how intense the smell was, and I was buying drinks and shit to just breath into to help with it. Anyway, we go outside and immediately have people trying to pick us up in cabs, we hop in one, and away we go. The streets there are like an Indiana Jones movie or whatever, no laws, just herds of people all swerving and honking and whatever the fuck it took to keep moving forward. My wives brother explained that it helps if you think of the streets like a river, traffic just flows wherever it can. Our driver ended up trying to cheat us on the ride and ended up verbally fighting with my brother in law until he had to threaten to get the police involved. Taxi's are required by law to use their meter, and our guy never turned it on and was saying we owed him like 3 times what it should have cost.
Anyway, initial observation in Bangkok-
1. Everything is dirty and run down except for temples, which are everywhere.
2. We still can't communicate very effectively, but people are constantly trying with whatever English they know to sell you something.
3. Despite all the chaos everywhere, I never felt unsafe here, though I also never went off the beaten track, something I did constantly in Japan.
4. People were 50-50, either they were smiling or scowling. I had people who seemed super customer oriented, and also a lady hit me with her cane and yelled "YOU CHEAP! THAI MONEY WORTH NOTHING!" when I didn't want to pay her for fish food she was showing in my face (we were near a pond). It was funny, but yeah...
5. Seems like a great place to go if you want to fuck a prostitute or eat an endangered animal. Everything just seemed shady.
6. WE WANT TO LEAVE. lol.
Seriously though, at the end of the first night I was like "I'm going to do my best to make the most of this, but holy shit, I've never been to a new place before and within hours thought "Can we just go back to the airport and leave?" you know?" and my wife agreed.
We ended up going to a couple huge malls, saw Star Wars in a theater that had beds instead of chairs, visited temples and markets. That was pretty much our 3 days in Bangkok. We ate an amazing seafood dinner at a place where I paid $7 for a stupidly large plate of lobster, crab, etc etc that was awesome. That being said, while eating my seafood, I pointed out the 3 big rats running down the edge of the building to my wife, so again, not for everyone.
Now, Chiang Mai was better for sure, if I had only gone there I imagine my Thailand review would be "Everythings run down, dirty, and smells, but the people were nice enough, the food was good, everything is dirt cheap, and its an experience so go for it." It was pretty laid back and almost tropical. Like a tropical Mexico? I guess Mexico has tropical parts too, I've just never been. My wife said "Now we know that if we are ever going back to Thailand with friends or something to just go straight here" and I was like "Uhhh why would we ever do that, we should talk our friends into going somewhere else entirely or just not go with them if they are dead set". I just can't see with limited time and money for traveling why I would ever go back to Thailand at all.
When Chiang Mai was done we flew back to Thailand for 1 night and walked around Chinatown there some, and it was pretty cool. The next morning we went back to Japan and had a 22 hour layover, so we did one last day at Akihabara. I swear, when we got off that plane to Japan we were SO RELIVED. We beelined for our hotel and took the longest showers ever, forever unclean.
The way I have been describing the difference to friends is like this.
In Japan you walk into a public bathroom and its clean. You go into the booth and it's basically floor to ceiling partitions, so it seems very private. You sit down on the toilet and find the seat is heated. There's a 50% chance the seat starts playing light music or ocean sounds for further privacy. The bidet squirts whatever water is in the line into the bowl, ensuring that its nice and warm for you if you need it. You hit a button and it sprays your asshole off, then you wipe to clean or just dry off and flush. You wash your hands and go leave.
In Thailand you pay to get into most public bathrooms. They are dirty and dingy and comparable to a bathroom you would find at a public park in america. You go into the stall and its basically an american stall. There is no toilet paper (the sewer system can't handle it) so if shit is wet and dirty, no way to even clean that off. You try to hover over the bowl while you shit so you don't touch anything. When you are done you reach over to the right, where there is a water sprayer thing they call a bum gun. Its the same thing you have in your kitchen sink to spray off dishes. So you reach over and pick up that cold wet thing, its wet from the ricocheting ass water of the other infinite number of people who used it before you. Try to use that without getting fucking water everywhere.. and then there is no way to dry off, so you just have to pull your pants up and let that shitty ass water soak into your clothes. Ohh and then there's a 50-50 chance of the bathroom even having sinks, and a 0% chance of there being soap. It was gross, really gross.
Here is a rushed trip recap.
First night we basically just got to our Hotel and crashed.
Second day we walked the blocks all around our hotel just going into shops, eating, drinking, and checking stuff out.
Initial observations -
1. Everything is super clean
2. We can't communicate with anyone, even simple things require effort (my wife needed chopsticks, and our servers at a sushi bar had to be shown a picture, the word "Chopsticks" is not universal it seems, lol)
3. It feels super organised and safe
4. Everyone seems like they are sorry they can't help us, lol, just got a very friendly vibe everywhere
5. Everything is ADORABLE. If I lived here I don't think I would own a single thing that wasn't cute. My house would look like Pee-Wee's Playhouse for sure.
6. WE WANT TO DO EVERYTHING.
The rest of our 11 days there were filled with plans of "We are going to try and do all this stuff tomorrow" and then going to do the first thing on our list... and ending up just spending the whole day off the tracks with our plans to the wind. We did some touristy stuff - Checked out a museum, went to Disney Sea one day, checked out Tokyo Skytower (saw Mt Fuji from it), saw the Robot Restaurant show, saw some shrines, went to a teahouse, went to a cat cafe, walked around the Palace and a bunch of parks. We tried to hit up a lot of the random districts and things too, but man, we WASTED so much time and don't regret a second of it. I've never seen my wife so thrilled with a place, so I just kind of rode that and tried to keep that energy going. She wants to go into 30 stores to just look and not buy anything today? Cool, lets fucking do itttttttt. She wanted to go into an arcade at 4pm and stay until midnight? Sure thing. Spend $40 trying to win a garbage toy out of a claw machine, go for it.
It was just fun everyday, even if all we were doing was walking around a ton. Food was great, getting around was easy, people seemed super nice, and it was just easily the best city I've ever been to. I hate cities, and I did not want to leave. I could easily spend months there and see new shit every single day. Loved it.
Side note, we didn't know where we were going to want to be, or how hard it was going to be to get around, so I had only booked 3 days at the Gracery (about $120 a night) building when we got there, and 1 night at an APA ($64) hotel near the airport for our last night. The other 7 days we left open and figured we would play it by ear. We stayed 2 nights at a hotel (about $180 a night) over by Disney, and then decided lugging even our backpacks around wasn't awesome, and we had really liked the central location of Gracery, so we ended up re-booking 5 more nights there. However, our last night at the APA was REALLLLLLLLY close to the Gracery in terms of quality at half the price. It was a little smaller, but if I was going back I would totally save a ton of money by just staying at an APA, they were everywhere.
Then it was time to go to Thailand.
First thing- right off the plane, it stank like shit in the airport. I assumed they must be having a problem or something, but no, it turns out they have some disaster of a sewer system and everything just reeks of human shit. We were in a market, a massive market, and there was just trenches with grates over them where you could see the shit and piss slowly flowing under your feet like 2 feet down. I'm a pretty fucking hardy dude, I'm not easily bothered by inconvenience, but there were several times I was almost sick at how intense the smell was, and I was buying drinks and shit to just breath into to help with it. Anyway, we go outside and immediately have people trying to pick us up in cabs, we hop in one, and away we go. The streets there are like an Indiana Jones movie or whatever, no laws, just herds of people all swerving and honking and whatever the fuck it took to keep moving forward. My wives brother explained that it helps if you think of the streets like a river, traffic just flows wherever it can. Our driver ended up trying to cheat us on the ride and ended up verbally fighting with my brother in law until he had to threaten to get the police involved. Taxi's are required by law to use their meter, and our guy never turned it on and was saying we owed him like 3 times what it should have cost.
Anyway, initial observation in Bangkok-
1. Everything is dirty and run down except for temples, which are everywhere.
2. We still can't communicate very effectively, but people are constantly trying with whatever English they know to sell you something.
3. Despite all the chaos everywhere, I never felt unsafe here, though I also never went off the beaten track, something I did constantly in Japan.
4. People were 50-50, either they were smiling or scowling. I had people who seemed super customer oriented, and also a lady hit me with her cane and yelled "YOU CHEAP! THAI MONEY WORTH NOTHING!" when I didn't want to pay her for fish food she was showing in my face (we were near a pond). It was funny, but yeah...
5. Seems like a great place to go if you want to fuck a prostitute or eat an endangered animal. Everything just seemed shady.
6. WE WANT TO LEAVE. lol.
Seriously though, at the end of the first night I was like "I'm going to do my best to make the most of this, but holy shit, I've never been to a new place before and within hours thought "Can we just go back to the airport and leave?" you know?" and my wife agreed.
We ended up going to a couple huge malls, saw Star Wars in a theater that had beds instead of chairs, visited temples and markets. That was pretty much our 3 days in Bangkok. We ate an amazing seafood dinner at a place where I paid $7 for a stupidly large plate of lobster, crab, etc etc that was awesome. That being said, while eating my seafood, I pointed out the 3 big rats running down the edge of the building to my wife, so again, not for everyone.
Now, Chiang Mai was better for sure, if I had only gone there I imagine my Thailand review would be "Everythings run down, dirty, and smells, but the people were nice enough, the food was good, everything is dirt cheap, and its an experience so go for it." It was pretty laid back and almost tropical. Like a tropical Mexico? I guess Mexico has tropical parts too, I've just never been. My wife said "Now we know that if we are ever going back to Thailand with friends or something to just go straight here" and I was like "Uhhh why would we ever do that, we should talk our friends into going somewhere else entirely or just not go with them if they are dead set". I just can't see with limited time and money for traveling why I would ever go back to Thailand at all.
When Chiang Mai was done we flew back to Thailand for 1 night and walked around Chinatown there some, and it was pretty cool. The next morning we went back to Japan and had a 22 hour layover, so we did one last day at Akihabara. I swear, when we got off that plane to Japan we were SO RELIVED. We beelined for our hotel and took the longest showers ever, forever unclean.
The way I have been describing the difference to friends is like this.
In Japan you walk into a public bathroom and its clean. You go into the booth and it's basically floor to ceiling partitions, so it seems very private. You sit down on the toilet and find the seat is heated. There's a 50% chance the seat starts playing light music or ocean sounds for further privacy. The bidet squirts whatever water is in the line into the bowl, ensuring that its nice and warm for you if you need it. You hit a button and it sprays your asshole off, then you wipe to clean or just dry off and flush. You wash your hands and go leave.
In Thailand you pay to get into most public bathrooms. They are dirty and dingy and comparable to a bathroom you would find at a public park in america. You go into the stall and its basically an american stall. There is no toilet paper (the sewer system can't handle it) so if shit is wet and dirty, no way to even clean that off. You try to hover over the bowl while you shit so you don't touch anything. When you are done you reach over to the right, where there is a water sprayer thing they call a bum gun. Its the same thing you have in your kitchen sink to spray off dishes. So you reach over and pick up that cold wet thing, its wet from the ricocheting ass water of the other infinite number of people who used it before you. Try to use that without getting fucking water everywhere.. and then there is no way to dry off, so you just have to pull your pants up and let that shitty ass water soak into your clothes. Ohh and then there's a 50-50 chance of the bathroom even having sinks, and a 0% chance of there being soap. It was gross, really gross.
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