Stop-over in Bangkok

Hi everyone! :)

After our short stay in Kuala Lumpur, we are now in Bangkok for two days.
We flew here with Malaysia Airlines (a really good airline by the way!) on Tuesday. Luckily, we could take a train straight to our hostel, the Bed Station Hostel. It was already getting dark and we were tired from the flight, so we didn't do much on our first evening here.
 After we found a cook shop (?) on the street that actually offered a vegetarian dish (fried rice with veggies, yay! :D), we walked around the streets near our hostel. A lot of locals had set up little booths or counters with grilled meat, fish balls, fresh fruit, etc. It was so cool! Although 90 percent of the food they offered included meat... (Finding vegetarian food is gonna be a huge challenge, especially in the countryside. Plain rice, here we come! XD)

On Wednesday, we decided to go to Chinatown and Little India. To get there, we took a bus. The bus was pretty fun because it didn't actually stop, it just drove a little slower at the bus stations and you almost had to jump in and out. :D
After our adventurous bus ride, we had to walk quite a bit to get to Chinatown. When we finally got there, we were amazed by all the different impressions. We walked along a tiny street with little shops and booths packed on both sides. They offered clothes, bags, food, cosmetics, ... I was overwhelmed by the different smells, sounds, by everything actually. It was a lot to take in! And there were so many people, tourists and locals.
After fighting our way through the narrow street, we walked to a flower market. It is supposed to be the most beautiful market here in Bangkok with all the different kinds of flowers, their vibrant colors and different smells. However, it was already past noon, so a lot of vendors had already sold many of their flowers, so it was not as colorful as we had expected.
Our next stop was in Little India, which was very similar to the narrow streets of Chinatown, just with lots of Indian goods. We found a little restaurant where we ate something and took a little break from everything. Bangkok is so full of life, it's just overwhelming! :)
We were so tired, that we decided to go back to our hostel. In the evening, we went to the same cook shop as the day before where we tried papaya salad. We had read online that it was a special dish here, so we wanted to try it. What we got was very different from what we had expected, though. The papaya was green and mixed with peanuts and tomatoes. Along with that, we got a second plate filled with raw beans, a piece of Chinese cabbage, and some weird-looking greens....We were confused, it tasted good though. :D

On Thursday, we got up early to visit some temples and the Grand Palace. We took a boat along a canal (same system as with the bus: hop on or off as quickly as you can and try not to fall in the water), and walked the rest of the way to the Wat Pho temple. The temple consisted of multiple little monuments that were decorated with colorful tiles and gold, various temple buildings, and many statues of different animals, buddhas, or traditional Thai dancers and warriors. It was gorgeous!! The temple's main attraction was a giant lying buddha in one of the temple buildings. We had to take off our shoes and wear green robes (to cover our shoulders and knees) to get inside. The buddha was golden and just huge! It filled the entire room!!
 After we finished walking around the whole area, we went to the Grand Palace which was right next to Wat Pho. As we got closer to the entrance, we came across masses of Thai people, dressed entirely in black clothes. We already knew that the Thai king had died a few weeks previously, and that the entire country is now grieving for about a year. What we didn't know, was that they had put his body in the Grand Palace, and that thousands of Thais come here every day to see and pray for him. It was crazy how many people were there and waited in the seemingly endless line to see their king for one last time. They had set up booths with free drinks and food, and even one that said "Mental Health" (for the people that couldn't handle all the grief, I guess). It is so impressive how united the whole nation seems to be!

We stood in front of the entrance and ate some delicious spring rolls as we came across two fellow German travelers from our hostel. We went into the palace together. First, we had to put on long skirts (again to cover up our knees), and then we could enter. The campus around the palace was amazing!! Even more colorful buildings, more statues, and a lot more gold than in Wat Pho! We walked around and took lots of pictures. Then we went into a textile museum that was located right in front of the palace. It had an exhibition about the outfits of the traditional Thai Khon dancers that was pretty interesting. Furthermore, it featured an exhibition of the Thai queen's favorite dresses (as an honor to her).
We were pretty exhausted from all the walking and the masses of tourists, so we decided to go back to our hostel.
In the evening, we went to a night food market with our German friends. Unfortunately, it started to rain, so we went inside a little Thai restaurant. After the rain had stopped, we walked through the streets and admired all the different foods. We tried little pancake-balls filled with coconut milk, pretty good! :)

Despite many negative experiences we had heard from others, we had an amazing time here in Bangkok! Yes, it was noisy and pretty dirty, but the people were really friendly, the markets were great, the palaces and temples were absolutely gorgeous, and the food was good. We will come back here at the end of our trip through Southeast Asia (because our flight to New Zealand will depart from here) and stay for some more days. :D

Tomorrow, we will fly to Hanoi, Vietnam. I'm so excited! :)

Thanks for reading my blog!
Annette <3

Chinatown

Wat Pho

Wat Pho

Wat Pho

The lying Buddha

The Grand Palace

The Grand Palace

The Grand Palace