tl;dr version: We went to Koh Samed and spent 3 days (one of them Christmas) drinking Mai Tais on the beach.

Fortunately for us, the bus station to Koh Samed was located near the Skytrain, right off the Ekkamai stop. You can see the bus station from the train. As we approached the station, we were greeted by several drivers, the last of which was a taxi driver who, after being told we were taking the bus, showed us to the correct window. The Thais are consistently the friendliest and most helpful people I’ve ever met.

We took the bus to Ban Phe, which has a ferry to Koh Samed, and we purchased both at the same time. If you’re going to Koh Samed, look at what beach you’re staying on; some beaches have direct ferries from the pier, rather than taking the long route we did. It may even be cheaper. The bus provided water and snacks for the ride, which was pretty awesome. You don’t find service like that in the US :).

The bus ride itself was interesting. I would definitely recommend to anyone who goes to Thailand to take a least one trip out of the city. The countryside is absolutely fascinating. Bangkok itself and Thailand as a whole is a combination of old Third World-y housing and Western development. Simply staring out the window during the bus ride was enthralling. I wish I had taken pictures, sorry.

Along the bus route, we stopped a number of times to drop people off on the side of the road; not at a bus station or at anything organized, but just in random locations in random towns. I guess they give rides to people who need them.

We arrived in Ban Phe and crossed the road to the pier. Before we got on the ferry, there was a window we had to stop at. There’s a 200 Baht per person fee to enter Koh Samed, which is a national park. We almost thought it was a scam, but fortunately, there were other Americans with us who knew about the fee in advance.

Getting on the ferry, like most things, was interesting; they don’t really provide any safety or anything, or even a ramp to walk on. They just kind stick a plank off the dock into a window and you just hop through. I was pretty sure I was going to fall in the ocean, with my huge backpack on my back, but I made it, and we went to the island.

The trip across was beautiful, and we shot the breeze a bit with the American couple with us before we landed. Once we got there, we were supposed to take a “taxi” to our resort, but the taxi was basically just a pickup truck with seats in the bed, and we had to drive over dirt roads with lots of potholes to get to our resort. I held on tight.

We got to the resort and checked in, and we were blown away by the view from our cabana. The cabana itself was just a bedroom and bathroom, but we did have a porch, upon which sat a little black cat, who was very friendly. We unpacked, played with him a bit, and then went off to eat an early dinner before getting some dusk swimming in. The water was warm and very salty, and I spent a lot of the vacation just floating on my back.

That was Christmas, don’t forget, and that evening was spent lounging in a beach chair, drinking Mai Tais on the beach as we watched Chinese Lanterns float off into the distance.

The next day was pretty much spent swimming and eating. There are a number of people walking up and down the beach, selling fruit, water, margaritas, and chicken. It was interesting, though, because the bars along the beach don’t shoo them away or ask them to leave. In fact, one person wanted to order chicken from the bar, and they actually told him to buy food from the beach guys (they didn’t have chicken at the bar).

For dinner, every restaurant buys from the day’s catch, and they lay it out on ice on a big table on the beach. You go up to the table, point to what you want, and they grill it up for you right there. The restaurant we went to also have these tables without seats, exactly – the table was in the center, with a fully wrapped around bench (if that makes sense), will pillows that allow you to lay next to the table, rather than sit in front of it.

The end of the excursion was uneventful – we swam in the morning, ate breakfast, took the jeep-taxi back to the ferry, and returned home on bus that took us out. I did stop and pick up the white hat you see below in the market by the bus station. They do have a lot of weird snacks – mostly dried seafood. Once home, we relaxed and shared a few Facebook posts before retiring to bed.

tl;dr version: We spent our first 2 days in Bangkok, eating food and visiting the Jim Thompson House.

Day 1

Despite having vowed not to sleep past noon, we awoke the next day around 1:30 or so. Right as we climbed out of bed, we heard someone trying to enter the apartment with keys. Assuming it was the maid, I cracked the door a bit, and I was greeted by an affable British fellow. Steven, one of Robert’s fiends, was stopping by to drop off milk and fruit for us. I put some clothes on, introduced myself, and thanked him for the food. Black coffee suits no one.

We moved slowly that morning, expecting to mostly get out for dinner and take in a bit of the city, leaving more of the sightseeing to later in the week. Robert has an odd coffee machine, called Le Cube, similar to the Keurig machines you see in the US, but for making espresso. It was surprisingly good.

We eventually got out of the apartment and headed down to the pier. Bangkok, unlike New York, uses its main river, Chao Praya, as a significant thoroughfare for transportation. All the hotels on the river charter boats guests can use to help get around the city. Additionally, there are a number of smaller boats which act like water taxis, which you hail from a pier to take you where you want to go. It’s a decent system for transportation, though it does make the river quite crowded; throw in some river cruises and a few barges, and it’s a wonder boats aren’t colliding left and right.

Baan Chao Praya, the apartment building we’re staying at, charters its own boat as well, and we got our first look at the city. It was surprising how many of the buildings along the water were poor, given the typically high value placed on waterfront property. It appears that a lot of the houses are built out of aluminum siding, and a number of them seem precarious as they rest along the riverbanks. The past year had experienced a significantly higher amount of flooding, which may account for the precariousness of their situation. The fact that some of the houses were even allowed to be lived in at all was surprising.

The boat took us to Saphon Taksin, a major pier for commuter boats, as well as an interchange with the Skytrain. The disembarking process was little more than sidling up to the pier and hopping off while the pilot revved the engine just enough to keep the boat pressed against the dock. It didn’t look like any of the locals ever had a problem with this, but I did see one French guy look perturbed when the driver told him to jump out.

The Skytrain is a fairly new and really beautiful public transport system. It unfortunately covers a fairly small portion of the city and doesn’t go anywhere near the Old City, where all the temples are. However, it is very easy to navigate and very cheap.

We took the Skytrain one stop to Surasak, looking for a restaurant that Robert had recommended called Taling Kling. The first street we wandered up was the wrong one, but we did come across an Indian temple, where we made Tourist Mistake #1: don’t stop to read the info signs. Immediately upon doing so, we were approached by a man with no front teeth, who started by actually giving us some useful information: during some yearly celebration near the temple, the entire street is blocked off to cars and thousands of people come out for what sounded like a giant party.

He then asked us where we were going, and we mentioned the restaurant. A nice Thai woman overheard us and provided directions in pretty good English. We thanked her, and as we walked away, I commented that I was surprised we didn’t get a pitch from the toothless man.

But I spoke too soon. The man chased us down in his tuk-tuk and hopped out, showing us a map of where we were and where he could take us. “20 Baht, 1 hour.” We said no thanks, and he was kind enough to leave us alone fairly quickly.

Two things about this I’ll mention: first, while people will try to sell you things constantly (taxi rides, clothes, jewelry, paintings), they’re pretty good about leaving you alone once you say no. The second thing (and this slightly contradicts the first) is we were told that this is a fairly common scam in Bangkok. A driver will take you on a tour for really cheap, and at the end of the tour, you’ll end up at a shop (I was told typically a jewelry store) where you’ll be pressured into buying some gems or other worthless stones, with the driver getting a cut. I think the quick “no” leads them to seek easier targets who may seem intrigued and thus more likely to buy stuff at the end as well.

The Thai woman’s directions led us to the restaurant, where we had our first sampling of local Thai food, as well as our first insight into how cheap this country can be: we went a little crazy, with 2 apps, 2 mains, and a dessert, as well as a few drinks plus water (which you have to pay for, because it’s all bottled), and it came out to 1,500 Baht, or $50 at the current exchange rate. We ate a number of meals for 2 people, with drinks, at restaurants, for under $10 (300 Baht), and the street food can provide a decent meal for 60-100 Baht.

We returned the way we came, but not before stopping at 7-11. Yes, they have those here, and they are EVERYWHERE (at Koh Samed, there were two of them across from each other just off the dock). It’s a bit of a cultural uncanny valley-esque experience. They have the same look and layout as an American one, complete with a Slurpee machine, but everything is in Thai (obviously) and the snacks for sale are very different – a lot of things are seafood-based, with crab and crawfish snacks, plus incense and an entire row dedicated to varieties of ramen noodles. We got some ramen and some yogurt and headed home.

Day 2

I slept fitfully, waking up everything two hours or so, while Heidi didn’t sleep at all. Being 12 hours off from your normal sleeping times will do at to you. It did provide the opportunity to take some great photos of the sunrise over Bangkok from Robert’s balcony.

We continued to move slowly, eventually getting out of the apartment around 9 or so. We took the boat to Saphon Taksin and rode to the end of the line, National Stadium. The Skytrain there connects to MBK, which is basically a mall of sorts, but not quite the same as malls you see in the States.

We went mostly for food, and on the fifth floor, they had a massive cafeteria-style setup called Fifth Avenue. Upon entering, you get a swipe card which you can use to buy food from a wide variety of stations, serving food from all over the world: Thai (obviously), Greek, Italian, Middle Eastern, Indian, Chinese, etc. It’s really a bit overwhelming, and I was still out of it, between the jet lag and the shock of being in another country.

After eating, we wandered around the mall a bit, checking the prices for things and deciding what we’d want to take a look at when we returned. We decided to hold off shopping until the end of the trip, for budgetary reasons, but it looks like a lot of things will be quite cheaper here.

We then headed over to the Jim Thompson House, for our sightseeing of the day. Jim Thompson was an agent for the OSS, and he was stationed in Thailand during WWII. He loved the culture of Thailand so much that he decided to move there, where he built a traditional Thai-style house and reinvigorated the local silk-making industry, establishing the Jim Thompson Thai Silk Company and making Thai silk world-renowned. He disappeared quite suddenly at the age of 61 in 1967 in Malaysia, coincidentally at the age his horoscope told him to watch out.

His house was left behind, and it was quite beautiful. He actually took 6 traditional houses and transported them to the current spot and merged them together. Much of the house is designed, built, and decorated in the traditional Thai style, with a few alterations for convenience. It’s basically a museum now, housing Thompson’s large collection of artifacts from around Southeast Asia, although there is a lot of the house that retains some of the living furniture, like the bedroom and living room.

The whole set up gives you a pretty good insight into Thai houses and culture. Some notable factoids: most houses are built on stilts to ward against floods; the bedrooms are built with a raised threshold to keep babies in and bad spirits out; one of my favorite artifacts was the Mouse House, a Chinese kids could place a mouse into and watch him run around for hours – adults would also gamble on which mouse would escape first; the house was built inside out to emphasize the carving.

We returned home relatively early and researched buses to Koh Samed, as that is where our first excursion would take us.

tl;dr version: We arrived in Thailand without any problems.

We did a good job packing the night before,  which is surprising for anyone who knows me, so the morning of the flight we just had to tie up a few loose ends before we departed. We had plenty of time to make it to the airport, and we managed to arrive, check in, and pass through security with a full hour and a half to kill before the flight departed. We waited patiently, listening to the alternating Chinese and English announcements of the preceding flights as we sipped our coffees and read.

We were somewhat nervous about the flight. Prior to departure, we had read some reviews of the airline, China Eastern Air, and they were not good. Difficulties with the accent, the lack of food for long flights, and uncomfortable seating arrangements all were raised as problems by upset reviewers. The airline is run by the government, apparently, and I had taken to calling it Commie Air prior to the flight.

While the announcements were sometimes difficult to understand, the rest of the complaints turned out to be unfounded, and quite frankly, the service was better than Continental Airlines, the airline my dad always takes and complains about constantly. So much for market efficiencies.

The flight got off on time, and during the 15ish hour flight, we were treated to a full 2.5 meals. The extra half a meal was a serving of drinks and a half of a chicken salad sandwich that was served kind of randomly. The fried noodles I got for breakfast (I think it was breakfast…) was actually quite good.

The arrival in Shanghai provided the only moment of difficulty in the process, where we apparently had to pass through 3 lines before making our way to the gate, one of which was a pointless Transfer Services which did little more than tell us which gate our flight would be departing from. I can read the board, thankyouverymuch.

The flight to Thailand was another 5 hours, and we were treated to a snack plate, with an assortment of things both average and strange: chocolate wafers, onion cookies, and one curiously cold package titled “Aviation Radish.” I did not eat those.

After arriving in Bangkok, we waited again on the immigration line, which, besides being long, was a similarly painless process. As I remarked to Bob via email upon our arrival, the ease of the whole experience makes me a bit nervous. I keep expecting something to go wrong. We even managed to secure our bags without incident!

Getting a cab was really our first interaction with the locals. Bob had given us a card with the address and directions to the apartment, which we handed to the bored-looking woman by the taxi desk. She read it, nodded, and went back to reading her magazine. We waited for the cabs to arrive, and I started getting nervous, as the line behind me was starting to get a bit long, but a half-dozen or so pulled up all at once and everyone was able to get one.

There are four different color schemes for Thai cabs: yellow and green, which is the most common; red; blue; and a hilariously bright pink, which matched Heidi’s shirt at the time. We were directed to one of the yellow and green ones, driven by a friendly old Thai man. He helped Heidi get her massive luggage bag into the trunk and directed me to put my bags in the back seat, and I hopped into the passenger seat.

Which, by the way, was on the left side. Yeah, I didn’t expect it, but apparently they drive British-style in Thailand.  Go figure.

I handed the the directions to the driver, and we were off. The driver was super friendly, which is kind of a recurring theme: everyone we’ve met has been really friendly and helpful. His English wasn’t great, but we managed to make some small-talk.

“How many time you come to Thailand?”

“Hmmm?”

“One time, two time…”

“Oh, heh, this is our first time. Staying at a friend’s place.”

“Where you from?”

“America, New York City.”

“Obama!”

He asked us a few more questions, like where we were going in Thailand. I tried my best to keep my responses short and simple, which is harder than you’d think, especially because I have a penchant for verbosity (and big words 🙂 ).

Eventually, the conversation died, and I spent much of the trip staring out the window, taking in the city. I alternated between some level of intellectualization (“This kind of reminds me of Southern Italy.” “It looks like a fairly developed city.”) and astonishment (“Oh my god, I’m in fucking Thailand.”). We had booked this trip in March, so 9 months ago, and it felt like I was in a dream upon arriving.

We did make it to the building and made our way to Robert’s apartment, which was totally awesome. Robert is an avid traveler, now that he lives in Thailand, and his apartment is decorated with artifacts, cultural items, and artwork from around Asia. In addition, he has a balcony, which we spent much time out on, furnished with chairs and a lot of bamboo plants.  We took in the place and quickly fell asleep around 4:30am.