A Travellers Hub, Bangkok, The Asia Trip Begins

After a 12-hour flight, we arrived in the land of smiles, greeted by a chatty taxi driver who would take us into the heart of backpacking paradise. Rather than travelling solo this time, I’m travelling with two of my friends Braeden and Lewis, so I’ll be showing comparisons between solo and group travel throughout this trip in South East Asia. We got our taxi to an Airbnb because we thought it would be best to sleep off the jet lag. We paid £20 for 2 nights between 3 people and the room was a 5-minute walk from the world-famous Khao San Road, I’d always recommend a private room for a night or two after a long flight. Once we settled into the room, it was time to explore.

As we arrived around 7pm, we headed to Khao San Road and it was a bit of a culture shock. A giant strip of booming bars with loud 2010 pop music, fried scorpions and spiders to eat and weed sellers on every corner as it has been legalised earlier this year. We tried street food, and what I love about this place is you can drink from a bucket while getting a foot massage and chat with locals. It’s a nice mix of both locals and tourists, but I do feel this area is a tourist trap and you can easily spend way more Bhat than budgeted. We thought to ourselves, it’s only our first night once, so decided to party and sleep it off the next day. I don’t think I’d visit that road often, but going once or twice is a must when in Bangkok.

The next morning, we explored the city, I knew the city was religious but was shocked at how many temples there were. If you are a girl, remember to bring something to cover yourself in when visiting, as we walked around we wanted to go into temples but I was wearing crop tops, knowing its disrespectful to the culture, I missed out on some temples that I would have loved to look inside. We tried new street food, visited an art gallery and went into China Town Market. As Bangkok is such a big city, it’s best to get taxis to a part of the city and walk around exploring the specific area. In the evening we ate in Mango Vegan Restaurant, I had a gigantic buddha bowl, it was so good and nice to eat healthy rather than rice or noodles. On the nights we decided to chill, we would go to 7/11 (my new favourite shop) and try out all new snacks. The flavours were interesting to say the least, sushi flavoured crisps, Asian sweets and chocolate. I must admit most of it tasted overly artificial, but the 7/11 cheese toastie is something I’ll miss when I leave Asia.

There’s a large floating market just outside of Bangkok which takes about an hour to get there, we were originally going to go, but it turns out that we didn’t have so much time so instead, as Bangkok is not short of markets, we went to another one. Near where we were staying in Wild Ones Hostel there was a small market and next to it, were large canoe-type boats where you can get a boat to the floating market. After deciding and bartering 600 baht to get to the market we hopped on the boat through the villages and it was nice for the breeze on our faces considering it was 35°. The market was very beautiful although I didn’t feel good from the night before so I spent most of the time feeling sorry for myself, I wish that I could’ve enjoyed it a little bit more it was really beautiful. If you are in Bangkok I’d recommend going to the large Damnoen Saduk floating market, but because we’re going all over Southeast Asia we knew we would visit many more markets and skipped it this time around.

On our 3rd day in Thailand, we moved to Wild Ones Hostel for our Friday night, we wanted a big night knowing the next evening we were taking a night bus north to Chiang Mai to begin my masseuse courses. We began to realise after four days that we are now 22 and not 18, I know that we’re still very young but drinking was taking a toll, especially after cheap buckets and Sang Soms, the Thai locals favourite alcohol. The hostel was quite nice but far from the centre, it was very quiet there with around 10 people, nonetheless, we had a great night playing games and getting into the swing of backpacking life again. 

Before arriving in Bangkok I thought it be just like the opening scene of ‘The Beach’ chaotic, crazy and mopeds everywhere but no, I felt very safe here on our short walk from Khao San Road to the Airbnb on the first few nights. It was very upsetting seeing the amount of poverty. There were people sleeping all over the main roads, and what made it even sadder was seeing the King and monarchy face plastered around the city. But I did feel safe in comparison to Latin America I feel like I could’ve walked around easily at night and been completely fine. Locals here are very used to having tourists around and after Covid I feel like they may enjoy having tourists and income from us. The men are respectful and smiley, I haven’t been cat called once in Thailand and I feel respected here. Bangkok has a chaotic yet calm energy and I did really enjoy the city.

Now I am heading North to Chiang Mai to learn the art of Thai and Swedish Massage before living in a monastery with monks- follow to keep updated!