I've spent the last two days in Bangkok,where I met up with my tour group. Bangkok is quite different from where I've been prior to now. It's a huge city with lots of traffic and noise. It took quite a while to get from the airport to the hotel, but upon arriving at the hotel, I dropped my bags in my room and set off to explore the city before my group meeting at 6pm. I was lucky enough to run into a group of girls who were congregating in the lobby and saw one looking at my tour sign posted on the wall. I asked her if she was going on that tour and she said yes, and invited me out to lunch with the other girls she was with. Her name is Jodie and she had just finished a different G adventure tour (a month long tour through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia).
The group of us, 6 in total, snagged a Tuk Tuk, somehow managed to squeeze everyone in, and headed to
Khao San Road. This is a popular area for backpackers and nightlife. We met up with another one of their friends and I had so much fun listening to their stories about their travels and it got me really excited for my tour to begin. It was so cute, one of the guys who was leaving that day was crying because he was so sad to be going back home. I promise you, I will be the exact same way in two weeks from now.
When we returned to the hotel, we had enough time for a quick change and headed to our group meeting where we met our Leader, this awesome Thai dude who we call Willie, and the rest of the group. There are 14 total, 12 girls and 2 guys.. Lucky guys ;)! There are people from; England, Colombia, Switzerland, Holland, and me from the US. Everyone is very sweet, should be a fun crew. That night, Willie took us out to eat and from there, some of us headed to the Sky bar that's in the movie The Hangover. The views are quite beautiful from this bar, and the drinks quite expensive! In fact they were about 20 USD. Needless to say, we got our photos, drank our one cocktail, and headed back to Khao San Road to finish the night. We bar hopped for a bit, building up liquid courage, and then we all decided to bite the bullet and eat a scorpion. It was rather odd tasting. Really crunchy and honestly just tastes like fried food. I still kind of feel as if there are legs in my teeth though :/. The rest of the night we spent dancing and sweating with other tourists and headed back to the hotel. When I got back, my roomie was already sleeping, so I had to take extra care to be quiet. It's weird sharing a room now that I've been on my own for the last week, but nice to have company!
After breakfast this morning, Willie organized a tour for us because many of us wanted to do the same thing. He took us on a longtail boat ride through the canals in Bangkok. We saw a water buffalo and many huge dragon lizard things. Definitely made me never want to get in that water! After the boat ride, he took us through a temple called Wat Po. It was very beautiful and nice to share the experience with my new friends! This temple is best known for its gold huge reclining Buddha which has pearl imbedded into the designs on the bottom of his feet. When this was over, most of the group went back to the hotel because we only had a brief time before leaving, but a girl named Rachel and I decided to knock out one more site on our own. We'd rather rush around seeing things in the city than sit in a hotel! We rushed our way over to the Grand Palace, and lined up to get proper clothing coverage. We were in shorts and tanks and had to cover our legs and shoulders. This temple area is absolutely huge.. Usually people spend a few hours here.. We got it all done in 30 minutes. The highlight of the temple was an emerald Buddha set on top of this beautiful gold shrine, we weren't allowed to take photos, but it was breath taking. Anyway, 30 minutes went by very quickly and we had to quickly make our way to a taxi so we could make it back in time for our departure to the train station. Getting a fair taxi in Bangkok is nearly impossibly but we haggled a driver finally and made it back with plenty of time to spare. We picked up some street food and relaxed with the group until we made it to the train station.
We are currently on our way to the islands of Thailand on an overnight passenger train. I've got the bottom bunk and hope to get a few hours of decent sleep before our ride ends at 4:45 am. Tomorrow is a big day with the black moon party, we are all SO excited for it and I absolutely cannot wait to tell you all about it!
Speak soon!