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we spent two days in bangkok. the first day was a travel day between chiang mai and surat thani (8 hours in bangkok on flight layover), the second day was a travel day from nangyuan island en route to kampala (12 hours in bangkok between train arrival and flight departure).

air travel within thailand is certainly affordable ($30 one-way from bangkok to chiang mai) and easy, but i like the train – it’s more romantic, i guess. the bangkok train station is really nice, i thought. lots of restaurants (including dunkin donuts, who woulda thunk), luggage storage, clean showers. we arrived in bangkok from chumphon on the night train, which was supposed to leave chumphon at 10:30pm but didn’t leave until 1:30am. no biggie. we had 2^nd class sleepers, which is definitely the way to go. you get a full bed with pillow and blanket, a good night’s sleep, travel and accommodation all for $18.

we live in a big international city – okay, kampala isn’t bangkok, but it’s still an international city – so we focused our thailand time outside of bangkok. nonetheless, bangkok is a city to be experienced so we did our best in 20 hours.

royal palace & phra wat kaew
going to thailand means going to temples and phra wat kaew is the quintessential temple in thailand. the first thing we learned about phra wat kaew is that we cannot pronounce thai. honestly, every time we tried to pronounce something phonetically we met with blank stares and utter confusion. we did learn some basic thai – hello, thank you – so at least we weren’t totally useless. anyway, phra wat kaew is the temple that houses the emerald buddha and it shares the grounds with the royal palace and the whole complex is jaw-dropping. the color, architecture, and elaborateness are nothing like anything we have in the western world.

at the end of it all is a baskin robbins. you have to understand that we’ve had none of this for a year – no mcdonald’s, no starbucks, no major international food/beverage chains in africa except for south africa (the country) and northern africa (the region). so something like a baskin robbins is a real treat. crazy expensive though, beware. where the rest of thailand is uber cheap (phad thai $0.60), baskin robbins most definitely is not (double-scoop cone $6). it was so worth it, though.

amulet market
i don’t know much about amulets in thailand except that everyone wears them. big, small, single, multiple. everyone has an amulet around their neck. phil was intrigued, so we went to the amulet market – the place to buy/sell amulets in bangkok. the market was one of my highlights in bangkok. it’s a tightly wound market just down the street and around the corner from the royal palace. all you can buy are amulets and street food pretty much, but that’s what we were looking for so it suited us just fine. there are hardly any farang and the food is delicious. we ate noodles and curry overlooking the river watching big city life.

flower market
similar to the amulet market but more open, more colorful and selling flowers instead. thais make intricate, elaborate flower creations as offerings to the buddha. this is the place to buy them along with flowers of all kinds in bulk. it’s close to the river and to chinatown, so makes for a good trio of sites.

chinatown
besides china itself, the only chinatown i’ve been in is san francisco. chinatown in bangkok is something to behold. i would’ve liked to try some of the street food but neither of us was hungry, so it never crossed my mind at the time. although, i did try to buy some cherries (cherries!) and the woman refused to sell them to me because i wanted less than a kilo. the side streets are so jammed with stores, products, and people that they feel like narrow alleys (maybe they are?) and it’s just enough to wander without even thinking about buying anything. we got hopelessly lost, but no matter. we found our way out of the tangle eventually.

royal barges musuem
another nice off-the-beaten-path site is the royal barges museum. thailand is very, very in love with its king. king bhumipol (known as king rama ix) is the longest serving monarch in the world (yes, longer than queen elizabeth if you can believe it at 57 years since coronation) and is celebrating his 80^th birthday anniversary this year. the entire thai people are preparing for his birthday by wearing yellow polo shirts stitched with his 80^th birthday anniversary crest. a traditional perk of being king is having your own royal barge, which is hand-built and designed by the royal navy and decorated by the national art department. these boats are works of art and they float.

we hired a long-tail boat to take us from chinatown through the back channels of the city and to the royal barges musuem. this was another highlight of our time in bangkok for me. i really enjoyed being able to see the city from the water with the houses built right up to the edge, it was a chance to see people living.

our two hottest days in thailand were in bangkok. maybe nangyuan island was as hot, but heat is less noticeable and more bearable when you can cool off in the ocean. anyway, bangkok was hot. hot usually makes me really cranky (phil was relieved when we moved to uganda and he learned that it’s not excruciatingly hot here, a cooler climate boded much better for our marriage…), but i was okay in bangkok. the thing that did make me cranky though was the tuk-tuk / taxi drivers at tourist hot spots. we learned it’s virtually impossible to find a driver who will take you to where you want to go without first taking you to some set-up tourist trap where they’ll get a commission on whatever you buy. ugh. we opted for walking most everywhere instead, although we did really enjoy our boat taxi on the river.

uganda hasn’t come into its own yet tourism-wise. it’s still somewhat unknown, especially compared to its east africa neighbors. we like it that way because we don’t have the negatives that come with over-tourism. like the pushers at tourist attractions who haggle you to do this or go here or buy that. bangkok has those pushers, kampala does not.