What I Like

• Gleckelgirls's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Bangkok

Trip Start Dec 04, 2005 Previous
Entry Trip End Jun 16, 2006 Next
Entry

  Bangkok, Thailand
Tuesday, April 18, 2006

M: Of course, here we are back in Bangkok. I think we've been in Bangkok more in the past 2.5 months than in MA in the past 2.5 years. Ok, that's an exaggeration, but still. With so much time between Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam, we have a sort of extensive list of loves and less-than-loves. So, here we go.

LOVE!!!
- Mom's visit
- Small friends! (especially when doused in powder to keep them cool)
- Orange Fanta in a glass bottle
- Two girls biking side by side sharing the same umbrella (Laos)
- Eating with a fork and spoon (the spoon is what actually goes in your mouth)(Thailand)
- The "sexy" pose (Chiang Mai cooking class)
- The amazing smelling white and yellow flowers whose name we don't know
- Fried bananas, pumpkin, potatoes (sweet or regular), taro, fish/shrimp, spring rolls
- Luang Prabang
- Sleeping small ones at the market (many times, little kids are sleeping behind their parents' stall at the market or sometimes, actually on the stall) (mainly in Laos)
- Mango and sticky rice (with coconut cream and crunchies)
- Ta Prohm (favorite temple in Angkor Wat!)
- Elephants
- Chiang Mai (Ahn, in particular, was a GREAT asset)
- Eating through the market (let's try one of those and one of those, lots more variety than a sit down dinner)
- Squeezing the beignets for their freshness (Viet Nam)
- Wild monkeys (Siem Reap)
- Night market (Luang Prabang)
- The funny ways people ride bikes (legs crossed, with the person on the back also pedaling, etc. Viet Nam)
- Fruit in a bag with a stick
- Lucky (our tuk-tuk driver in Phnom Phen)
- Chang beer, Beer Lao and Angkor beer
- Using 2 currencies for one transaction (or 3 if you have some baht)(mostly Cambodia)
- Meow, Badipol's unbelievable cousin who was SO great to us in Hua Hin
- $100 = $1,000,000 kip (instant millionaire status!)
- Fashionable face masks for riding around in the traffic pollution (Viet Nam)
- Fruit shakes (or shacks or chakes or sharkes)
- Children's hospital in Cambodia
- Temperature of the ocean (Thailand)
- More bare feet
- How valued children seem to be
- Buddas EVERYWHERE
- Cooking class in Chiang Mai
- SHADE AND BREEZE (40 degrees Celsius is REALLY hot)
- How many things were done in charitable ways (Cambodia and Viet Nam)
- Rice cakes (not the way you would think, much more delicious)
- Street pad thai in Bangkok
- Little girls going to and from school (in their little uniforms, there is a lot of arm-linking, sometimes singing, sometimes hugging)
- Hoi An specialty foods (white rose, rice pancake, fried wontons, cau ba)
- Socially conscious shops (where your purchases support fair trade and teaching people life skills, Cambodia, Viet Nam)
- Hung (Viet Nam)
- A special "cake" filled with mung bean made by a villager in the hills (Viet Nam)
- Longans (found them too late, but this fruit is DELICIOUS!)
- Fat babies (no, they are really, really, really fat, it's glorious, Viet Nam)
- Rice, sesame, peanut treats (we're junkfood junkies, what can we say?)
- Warm, welcoming, trusting people

A little less love:
- Dirt and fume pollution when riding on an open air vehicle
- Oppressive heat and humidity
- Weekend market in Bangkok (the one everyone loves is just stressful to us!)
- Leaving Luang Prabang, Chiang Mai and Viet Nam
- Not speaking the language (M: I'm on a mission to learn Vietnamese before I next go to Viet Nam)
- Desperation in Cambodia
- There always being a catch (Viet Nam)
- Bus to Pakse (see Bad Day entry)
- Stress of Bangkok
- Lonely Plant: Southeast Asia on a Shoestring (horribly out of date and not always useful)
- Frog/cricket noisemakers (Chiang Mai)
- Squat toilets (although, they could be worse)
- Honking as a means of creating order on the road (especially in Cambodia and Hanoi)
- Cyclo drivers (Hanoi)
- Feeling on guard
- Paying for the toilet
- Sugar cane juice
- Vile alcohol from the hills (Viet Nam)
- Humidity
- Doxy sunburns (that is why our noses are frequently red in the pictures)
- Having "We Didn't Start the Fire" in our heads for all this time (M: just thinking Viet Nam got "Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock around the clock" in my head)

And we gleckel on...

Print this entry Share Bangkok hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry