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Getting used to the city

The area where we were staying was renowned for a pork stick dish, so of course we tried it and it was delicious. It was grilled pork on a stick with an amazing sweet peanut butter sauce. It also came with a vinegary sauce and a mix of comcomber, red onion and peppers (You are supposed to stick those at the end of the stick to make a “brochette”) One of the main thing we noticed about the food was that most people take it to go, food stand don’t always have stool for you to sit on or plates to serve.... And it’s not a to go meal like you are thinking of… it’s more like 1 plastic bag per element of your dish. The sauce of the pork was in one bag, the pork in an other, the vinegar.. you get it, and all of that was of course in one bigger plastic bag.

For something like the porkstick, eating out of a bag was fine but try with a soup…. So for our own good, we bought 2 bowl and a kit of utensils. With that, we were armed to try any type of meal we wanted (The fun part is that we hesitated to buy them at first, but we are using them almost every day now, it’s one of those (must have item) By the way, when you order drink from a stand don’t forget to ask for a cup otherwise it’s in a plastic bag again…

During our stay in Bangkok, we decided to visit a place call the Ancient city. It’s not really an historical site but more like a huge garden with some new and old construction representing the old Siam. Really beautiful and a nice place to have a good understanding of what thailand used to look like. It costed us 500 baht per ticket but the real price is 700 baht per ticket for foreigner (locals pay WAY cheaper). Here’s the trick we used. We bought them online. They are cheaper and you don’t even need to print them, it’s very convenient. Included in that price is a bicycle, use it! The parc is around 200 acres so if you want to visit everything and do not want to get too tired, the bike is perfect. (Side note: there's one temple on the propriety for which you need to be coverder to visit but they lend long skirt and shirt for free, (Here’s more about dress code in Asia) Be ready to get your shoes on and off, and on again and off again because if you want to enter in the buildings, you need to remove your shoes.. don’t worry they won’t get stolen, there’s too many! To get to the Ancient city, we took the BTS (here’s more information about the BTS and MST in bangkok) the site is a bit far but you can get pretty close with the skytrain and then take a taxi from there, it way cheaper than taking a taxi from Downtown or a bus tour.

In Bangkok, we also visited one of those famous night market and frankly I was deceived. It was more of a touriste thing than a real Thai market. We had a better idea of what a real market looks like with the one next to our place, it was smaller but real. The night market was still a fun experience, there was people, food and many many stands to discover.

The last day we had in Bangkok, we took a ferry to the royal palace. (not the same ferry than the one crossing the river) it’s a tourist ferry that get you from one tourist attraction to another. We took it only one way because we really just wanted a nice long boat ride… In the end, we didn’t visit the royal palace, we already visited the ancient city and we knew that the royal palace wasn’t an historical and magistical monument so we decided to skip it. (We also heard it was too expensive for what it actually was, and that you need to be covered for the visit…) After 10 day in Bangkok, it was time to repack our bags (here’s an overview of our bags for the trip) to leave this beautiful city and flight to Phuket, an island in the south of Thailand.