Thailand Part 1

We arrived back to Hong Kong tonight from our weekend in Thailand, having had too much fun and wishing we could’ve stayed longer. My experience in Bangkok was one of the most fun times of my life; everyone needs to go!!!

We started out by meeting a man from Jordan in the Hong Kong airport who was looking for our same flight to Bangkok. He could tell from our accents that we were foreigners and asked where we were from. When we said Texas, he asked where our cowboy boots were and why we don’t walk funny, as he demonstrated the strut of a cowboy who just got off a horse after riding bareback for like 6 hours. We informed him of the terrible Texas stereotype, and I think we fooled him into thinking that we were pretty normal. On the flight there, there was a man whose snoring was louder than the plane engine itself sitting RIGHT behind me. My three friends and I were watching a movie on the flight and could hear it through our headphones. It was like a beast coming out of hibernation; it was quite impressive, actually.

Taking a taxi to our hostel was a challenge and kind of terrifying to be honest. The driver didn’t speak English and we had no idea where our hostel was. He just started driving when we got in, so we didn’t know where he was taking us since he didn’t have directions yet. We were trying to point it out on a map on our iPhone and he pulled off the highway into the grass and just stopped the car. All kinds of bad thoughts were going through my mind, but he looked at the phone and after a while we finally found the hostel. The hostel was really awesome. It was big and had good food. Oh, and everything is SO CHEAP in Thailand. The ratio of Baht to the US dollar is 32:1. We were eating big, nice meals in malls and restaurants for like eight bucks. It was awesome.

Even aside from the taxi situation, our weekend in Bangkok actually started out pretty rough. We woke up Friday morning and ate breakfast at the hostel and went to walk around and explore Bangkok on our own for the day. We were walking around the markets near our hostel trying to find where we can catch a cab to Ayutthaya, the capital of the Ayutthaya province of Thailand, to see the Siamese ruins and temples. We were eventually directed to this sketch van and we decided to take it. On the way to Ayutthaya, we experienced bad rain and flash flooding, which we thought would ruin our plans for the day, but it turns out it made it all the more fun! Over an hour later, the van dropped us off in the rain, literally in the middle of nowhere on the side of the highway and said this was the Ayutthaya stop. We were greeted by random men who were helping us and giving us directions, but they turned out to be tour guides so we decided to do a tour with them in this microscopic buggy that was supposed to fit nine of us. We were very skeptical but we all fit! So there we were, riding along the highway in the pouring rain in the back of a tiny buggy truck, laughing so hard at whatever it was that we just got ourselves into. The guide took us to get umbrellas and ponchos before we began the tour, but the rain stopped before we got to the first sight of the tour anyway.

Some of us girls needed to go to the bathroom (typical) before we began the tour. The “bathrooms” our tour guide took us to were so disgusting that I would rather pee in the holes in the ground like we did in mainland China…. There were dogs in the bathroom just lying on the floor, no sink, no soap, and no toilet paper. It’s a girl’s worst nightmare. We were too scared to go in alone, so Ellen and I shared a bathroom, and it was quite the bonding experience.

One of the places we went to was a big reclining Buddha lying down on his side. I went to take a picture in front of it lying down like he was and the locals who were selling flowers there starting screaming and waving their hands. Apparently you can’t lie down there…so this picture of me standing will have to suffice.

-Ashley