Robin & Karen Living the Dream: The Journey Begins…. In Bangkok, Thailand

We are excited to be embarking on a six month South EastAsia adventure.

But first a bit of history about us - we are 67 and 68 years old and we have lived full-time in a class A motorhome for six years. We retired in 2012 and have been going south every winter in an RV to either Arizona or to Mexico. This last winter as we were lounging about on Playa Santipac in Baja California Sur, Mexico we were lucky enough to be parked next to Carl and Judy, a lovely couple from BC. After many interesting discussions and stories of their travels, we were inspired to take the plunge and head overseas for this coming winter. Carl and Judy have done it many times and had countless tips and travel advice which we were very happy to receive. So we spent the remainder of the winter and most of this summer planning and purchasing things in preparation for our adventure. And so begins the story.

To make things even more interesting we decided that we would travel with backpacks only, my backpack at least has wheels. October 21,2024 we woke to our first skiff of snow and a temperature of -1C. We spent the day winterizing our motorhome and putting it in storage then spent one night at our son Shane’s house before being taken to the airport on October 22. We spent the next 28 hrs in transit, 18 hrs in flight, flying from Edmonton to Vancouver to Taipei to Bangkok. We arrived to a Temperature of 32C, 78% humidity & are 13 hours ahead of Alberta

YouTube has been our friend over the last many months so we were quite familiar with where to go in the airport to exchange money and what city bus to take to get us to our hotel in Bangkok. We pride ourselves on being able to manage public transit and are happy to report that our trip of an hour into Bangkok cost ฿60 per person or $2.47 CAD. We checked into the New Siam Riverside Hotel right along the Chao Phraya River for eight nights at a cost of $60 per night including breakfast, air conditioning, a pool and a wonderful view of the river from the patio.

City bus

View from the upper patio where we ate breakfasts

Our first day was a bit of a blur as we landed at 9:30 AM and tried to stay up for the entire day. We did manage to find some delicious street food, toasted cheese & ham sandwich ( a staple food of budget travellers & quite delicious, heated while you wait in a sandwich maker) at 7-11 with beer and made a trip to the Khao San Road area.

No we did not try any!

Scorpions &snakes!

Massage parlours everywhere

Our list of things to see and do in Bangkok was long so early the next day we set off after our delicious buffet breakfast to Chinatown. We chose to travel as the locals do on the river taxi that goes up and down the river one way trip costing ฿16 or $.66 Canadian. So many things to see and so many things to smell - it was overwhelming. Everything from gold shops to stores full of nothing but plastic packaging to dried foods interspersed with food stalls , food carts, and motorbikes and noise everywhere.

The river taxi

A street in Chinatown, motorbikes & the occ. car will drive down them!

Busy streets of Chinatown

We spent our evening sitting people watching, drinking beer on Khao San Road to end the day. And we both bought elephant pants! $4-6!

We had to take in the Chatuchak weekend market - a massive 35 acre site with over 15,000 shops, Divided into 26 sections, selling everything from clothing, to shoes, art, incense, handicrafts, flowers, ceramic, silks, antiques, books, etc. and of course, food & massages. To get there, we took a city bus that cost $.37.

We did some shopping (my lightweight second hand daypack fell apart & I found a “knock off” North Face daypack for $18.50), we ate meat on a stick, had fruit smoothies, we people watched and I had a 45 minute Thai massage in a chair, which was amazing & only $8.50!

Delicious meat on a stick

We lucked out at being in Bangkok for a very special day - the King’s boat procession. This only happens every 5 to 10 years and consists of 52 boats being paddled down the river, one of which carries the King & Queen. The king was born on a Monday, so Thailand is decorated with yellow on his birthday and on this special day. There were yellow flags, yellow bunting, flowers & pictures of the King everywhere. And people dressed in yellow clothing all waiting eagerly to see the procession.

In the days leading up to this the river was cleaned of all floating plants & debris, sidewalks were swept, flowers were added. On the day the river was closed to all traffic - normally there are taxi boats, long tail tour boats, tourist boats, sunset dinner cruises, rice barges, military & more!

Boats cleaning the river

I went to a nearby park and found the best spot to give me a partial view of the river and Robin decided to stay home and watch it on YouTube. He got better pictures than I did.

My view, still very cool!

There are Buddhist temples everywhere in Bangkok and we decided we needed to go and see Wat Arun, one of the older ones. You must have your shoulders and your knees covered to enter to show respect so Robin got to wear his lovely elephant pants. We were surprised to see so many people, both tourist, and Thai people dressed in traditional Thai clothing. You can rent the clothes and then have a photographer follow you around to take photos. The grounds and the Wat itself were spectacular,beautiful paintings, frescos, tiles, mirrors, gold leaf, and since the King had been there just the day before some additional decorations.

Wat Arun

We booked a tour of the smaller canals (Klongs) riding in a long tail boat to see some of the neighbourhoods overlooking the water and to see how many Thai people live. One stop was to see the massive Big Buddha, (92 metres tall, knee span of 63 metres), but wouldn’t you know it - was covered with scaffolding & green mesh - under some renovation work - hopefully we’ll see it in the spring before we go home.

Long tail boat

Long tail boat motor

A lady coming to try & sell stuff

BigBuddha

Big Buddha

Beer, soda or cannabis for sale

Lined up waiting for the locks to open

There are laundry services all over the place almost as often as 7-Eleven’s but we did find a self serve laundry and did a big load for about six dollars in one machine - wash, soap, dry - everything all in one.

I had installed an eSIM into my phone that covers all of Asia with a good package for data. Only costing me $28 for 30 days and it works very well here plus there is Wi-Fi in hotels and restaurants.

Our next adventure was a tour to see the Damnoen Saduak Floating market and the Maeklong Railway market. The tour desk at our hotel convinced us that we should get a private driver, normally quite expensive, but we thought $144 for the day was reasonable. Almost a 2 hr drive out of Bangkok into the countryside, trying not to look out the window as he was a bit of a crazy driver, and we arrived at the floating market. We then got into our own long tail boat and cruised up and down the canals for an hour Very busy in the centre of the market with boats scraping by on each side,vendors trying to sell you food, handicrafts, beer and cannabis.

We bought a bunch of bananas from this lady

Back to the car and a short drive to the Maeklong Railway market, which is a working market along a railway track that is in use, several trains passing throughout the day. They sell fish, raw meat, vegetables, fruit, souvenirs, as well as small restaurants - we sat on the edge of the track to eat in a restaurant and watch the train go by slow slowly after all the umbrellas and awnings were pulled in.

Chopping heads off of eels

There are usually Western toilets but this is a Thai toilet,
water is for cleaning your butt, some have a water hose, like in RV’s

We had wanted to see Chinatown at night to see all the lights so we ventured back on the water taxi and spent a few hours walking around, eating & having beers. On the way back to our hotel we took our first taxi, after doing some haggling, we negotiated a ฿100 cost, $4.13 for an air conditioned 15 minute ride!

Roasting chestnuts

Chestnuts

We’ve been pretty busy here in Bangkok, but we’re not very good at sitting still but we are having a good time and slowly getting used to the crazy heat. Here’s a few random shots in and around Bangkok.

We actually saw a similar sight, but add one baby to make 5 passengers!

3 kids with spear guns, aiming at the river, not sure what they were hoping to catch!

One of many bridges over the Chao Phraya River

Typical narrow side streets, you are always on the lookout for cars or motorbikes. And it’s a left hand drive country, so never sure which way cars are coming from!