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Mark and I had one last chill day in Krabi - mostly centered around eating and sleeping. The night market in Krabi was good fun and gave us a chance for some more amazing and super-cheap Thai food. It was entirely a food market - lots of the typical food we've been enjoying, as well as a ton of fun desserts. This adorable older Thai couple had a little food stall and made tiny tasty pancakes. They were so cute and obviously had been making these desserts for years - they had quite the routine down.
The morning of Tuesday, the 7th of February, we took a bus to the Krabi airport and caught a flight to Bangkok. We met a young Canuck couple on the way to the airport, Kyle and Steph, who are doing the same travel route as us, and almost in the same time frame. It was good to compare notes and itineraries, and who knows, maybe we'll run into them along they way.
We landed in Bangkok, expecting chaos, but really, taking the skytrain into the city and finding our hotel was fairly uneventful. We ended up with an upscale hotel in the shopping district of the city. We were surrounded by huge, fancy malls, and not much else. Because we weren't staying in the typical backpacker's area, the noise, commotion and traffic were pretty minimal. We wandered around in the afternoon, trying to find the Cambodian or Vietnam embassies to get advance visas, but had no luck - both embassies had recently moved! It was a really hot day, so walking around in the baking sun wore us out pretty fast.
After a break back at the hotel, we grabbed some dinner in Siam Square and took the skytrain down the Patpong, the night market. This was closer to the rowdy Bangkok we were expecting - lots of stalls arranged close together, tons of people crammed into the aisles, and lots of haggling and barganing. There were also the random guys standing around with menus, trying to entice us into their clubs or sell us a "ping pong show". They weren't too pushy or insistent, but they were everywhere! Having been warned about this by Courtney, we stayed away from them, but did end up buying a couple things in the market.
Wednesday morning, we headed out to tour the city a bit and see some of the main temples. We took the skytrain to the end of the line and hopped on a ferry that took us up the river to the temple of Wat Pho, where the HUGE reclining Buddha rests. The temple itself was a bit of a zoo, but most people were only there to see the 46m golden statue so the grounds were quiet and peaceful.
We grabbed a quick lunch in the area then took at 3 baht (10 cent) ferry across the river to Wat Arun, the temple of the dawn. It was much less crowded and had a tall mosaic praang (tower) for us to climb with a great view of the city.
We took the ferry and skytrain back to our hotel and rewarded our tired bodies with a foot/palm/shoulder massage down the block. Both Mark and I were expecting a relaxing, soothing massage but it was definitely more of a workout than that! The crazy strength in the thumb of the masseuse was painful! And the masseuse working on Mark was pretty short and actually stood on his chair to apply proper pressure on his shoulders.
At 4:15am yesterday morning, our alarm got us out of bed and we headed to the train station to catch a 6am train to the Cambodian border. We have our last flight out of Bangkok sometime in March so we're looking forward to seeing more of the city then. We passed through the Cambodian border without any trouble and grabbed a shared taxi with a couple of young Americans to the small city of Battambang. So pumped to be in Cambodia and can't believe how much of a different feel it has than Thailand.
We've had some great food already in Cambodia - similar to our Thai favorites, but a bit different. The typical Khmer dishes we've tried have all been great, and the fruit shakes are made with ice cream here (for $1.25), which is a great way to beat the heat! We picked up our Vietnam visas from the consulate here in Battambang so we're all set for our border crossing in a week or so. Wandering around the city today was great. The locals are so friendly and always have a smile. There are several large temples around the city so there are brightly dressed monks everywhere - we see them walking along the street and occasionally riding side-saddle on the back of motor bikes!
Tomorrow, we head to Siem Reap and have the chance to tour the awesome temples of Angkor Wat.
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Kris Love the dress, Beth! And great Buddha impression too : )