I am almost a full year behind getting photos together and finishing this travel blog. It feels strange writing about these travels now that the world is such a different place. Even though so much time has passed, I want to finish. The kids were young on this trip and I want to make sure that they remember the important parts of the trip. Hopefully we’ll have this blog to look back on when memories have faded.
Bangkok was one of those places where we went in with low expectations and ended up LOVING it. Almost everyone we talked to told us to spend as little time as possible in Bangkok – the city is crowded, dirty, and loud. Despite the advice, we decided we would stay for 6 weeks. Neither of us had been to Asia before and the kids had very little exposure to Asian food. We thought that Bangkok would be a transition time for us where we would be exploring a new city and culture but we would still have most of the western food and conveniences that we are used to. I also had a trip to Hawaii planned in early December for business and renting a place in Bangkok for 6 weeks meant that Brett would have his bearings by the time I had to leave for Hawaii so it would be less daunting for him to be on his own with the kids.
Our first night was pretty amazing. We got a taxi to our apartment, got lost for a while, but eventually got there. Then we went out for a walk to find some food. I knew Bangkok was famous for street food but I didn’t realize before then that it is everywhere. We only had to walk to the end of our street. We were nervous about what the kids would think of all the different sounds, smells, foods. We needn’t have worried. Kids are so much more adaptable and accepting than we give them credit for. These photos are from our very first dinner in Bangkok.
We were really happy with the neighborhood we were staying in. It was off the tourist map and very much a working class neighborhood. Very few people spoke any english and we often didn’t understand what we were ordering to eat. We just pointed at what we thought looked good and had to guess at what it was. It was nice to feel immersed in the real city.
Our apartment was very nice. Only two bedrooms and one bathroom which is a struggle for five of us (six when my stepdaughter Ashley visited) but we made do. Bangkok is where I first had to make peace with sharing my living space with cockroaches. They were in our kitchen and we couldn’t get rid of them. At their worst, they scurried across the kitchen floor and over my feet. Once one fell out of the kitchen cupboard when I opened it, then it rickocheted off my arm and hit my face. In the evenings we would sometimes see one run across the floor. The first couple of weeks were miserable until I had to just accept that this was how it was going to be and try to deal with it.
Ashley, my 20-yr old stepdaughter came to visit us just after we had first arrived in Bangkok. We spent the following days exploring the temples, palaces, rivers, and markets of Bangkok.
We mostly got around the city on foot and on the subway. The subway was inexpensive, convenient, and surprisingly easy to navigate. It makes an enormous city seem smaller because it is so easy to get across it on the subway. And its air-conditioned!! There were also lots of tuktuk rides, usually when we were too lazy to take transit or walk. We especially loved taking tuktuks at night all lit up with the lights of the city whizzing past. No seatbelts, no protection at all. Our safety standards were much lower than at home with our minivan.
After a while, we started craving some green space. The city was always moving and busy. We wanted to find a park where we could play and the kids could run around free. We looked up ‘best playgrounds in Bangkok’ and found Lumpini park. It looked perfect. A large park with one of the largest playgrounds in the city. It didn’t look too far away so we set off on foot. Maps can be deceiving in Bangkok. What looked like modest stroll ended up being a gruelling 2 hour walk in the heat. We were all looking forward to finally getting there.
As we got closer, we realized something didn’t quite seem right. The closer we got, the more crowded the streets became until we realized that there was a big festival going on the park.
This photo reminded me that this was the night Brett got some sort of food poisoning. While we were at the festival, he bought an order of shrimp dumplings. He didn’t finish them, saying that they did not taste good. The reaction took a few hours but when it started, it was ugly. It was so awful watching him go through that. It was probably a good day and a half before Brett started feeling like himself again and up for heading out to explore.
After we ate and eventually found the playground for the kids to play for a bit we tried to make our way out of the park. We didn’t realized just how busy the main thoroughfares in the park had become and even more people were spilling in from the transit stops into the park. It actually started getting scary at one point. We were so squished in between crowds, the kids were getting crushed and being pulled away from us by the moving crowd. We both had tight hold on the kids and they kept tight hold on us. It probably took us at least an hour to work out way a couple of hundred metres to make it out of the park.
One of our absolutely favorite places to go on the weekend was Chatuchak market, the biggest market in Thailand. We would go to just wander around, buy souvenirs, and generally have fun for a couple of hours. There is so much there, it is so crowded, and so full of energy.
One week we decided that the boys would all get haircuts at Chatuchak.
Not long after Brett and Iain started getting their haircuts, people started congregating and a crowd built up around the barbers so that I could barely get in to see them. It was a bit unsettling that so many people were taking photos of Iain. They all seemed to be smiling and laughing. It seemed the sight of Iain getting his haircut brought joy to a lot of people.
Ronan and I had a tradition of getting one of these spectactular mango smoothies at Chatuchak. Poor Ronan always got a stomach ache but he couldn’t stop himself.
Typical photo of the kids at the market. The begged and begged for those hand fans until we finally relented.
We visited the Grand Palace and a nearby temple on one particularly hot day in November. So many people, so much heat.
The next two photos were at our apartment in Bangkok. The first is a pretty typical dinner of street food. We almost never cooked in Bangkok. It was so much easier and cheaper to get street food. The second photo is of the swimming pool in our building. It was a nice amenity – of all the times we went to that pool, I don’t think there was ever anyone else in the pool.
We were lucky enough to meet up with old friends and make some new friends while in Bangkok. An old colleague of mine, Shaun, had been sailing around the world with his family for the last 5 years and just happened to be spending a night in Bangkok while we were there. We met up with Shaun, Sherrie, Paige, and Jordan for lunch at their hotel and had fun catching up and peppering them with questions about all the interesting places they had visited and interesting people they had met along the way.
Then there was Chantal and Pat. My friend Karyn in Portland had put me in touch with her cousin Chantal in Bangkok. Chantal and Pat were amazing and so welcoming. It’s not often we meet families with more kids than us – they had four children, all under 5!! And two large dogs. We were pretty awestruck at how relaxed and together they seemed. Our kids loved spending time with other kids.
It really was fun connecting with these families in Bangkok. We didn’t often have the opportunity to socialize and we really missed that. We were also left feeling inspired by these two amazing and adventurous families.
We loved our time in Bangkok. We were sad to leave. It’s not the cleanest city, and sometimes it can be downright depressing but it is so alive, energetic, and there is so much beauty to be found even in places you wouldn’t expect. I’m proud of the kids for embracing the experience. They tried the food and each found things that they liked. They walked for endless hours with us through markets and temples in very humid heat. They all slept in the same small bedroom (Ronan on a mattress on the floor despite the cockroach situation!), did their schoolwork most days, and on balance didn’t complain too much. I think they were also sad to leave.