Bangkok!

Fresh off our 10 days in Taiwan, we were READY. Ready for warmth, Thai food, and a new country. (90°F is their “cool” season. Cool. Sure.)

We flew out of Taipei, about a five-hour flight and landed in Bangkok in the evening. We trained into the city and made our way to an apartment waiting for us. Peach (Ryker’s grooms-lady for the wedding and BFF from college) lives in Bangkok and was kind enough to let us crash at her family’s condo. 31st floor with an incredible view of the city. Made us feel very fancy and very far from our Taipei hostel.

The Wrong Condo

Now… getting there was its own adventure. We got off the train (BTS), walked about 25 minutes through the Bangkok streets at midnight with our backpacks on and confidently strolled into a condo building to pick up our keys. We walked up to the front desk and asked for the keys to Peach’s apartment. The staff looked at us like we had three heads… “Who? What? We have nobody by that name.” We are sweaty and jetlagged, trying to explain who we are and why we’re here, and these poor people have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about… Then Meg so wonderfully said “Icon 3” which was the building right across the street. FACEPALM.

Day 1

We slept in until 11 AM. We finally dragged ourselves out of bed and made our way through the sunny streets of Bangkok to go find our first proper Thai meal in Thailand! We went to a restaurant called Im Chan… THAI FOOD GOOD AND CHEAP. Was their slogan… and yes, it was 100% accurate. We got like five or six dishes between the two of us and spent a grand total of $14! For both of us!

From there, we went to a mall (because sometimes you just need some air conditioning) and found a Jim Thompson store. Jim Thompson is famous for Thai silk, and Meg found the most beautiful silk scarf. Similar to the Pashmina scarf she got when we were in India, the goal of getting these is mostly as memory pieces that we’ll keep forever.

Day 2 — The Train Market & Floating Market

Day two is when things really got moving. We had booked a tour that took us out to two of Thailand’s famous markets. (1000% only for tourists, but very cool and fun nonetheless)

First up: the Maeklong Railway Market. The one where a train drives through the middle of a market and all the vendors have to scramble to pull their goods out of the way. We were on the train for this part. You’re rolling through at a crawl while vendors are yanking back their tarps and then you see 1 million phones pointed up at you, and then the second the train passes, everything goes right back to normal like nothing happened.

From there, we headed to a floating river market. We hopped into a speedboat and cruised into this river market. Vendors on boats, food everywhere, the whole scene. We grabbed some street food bites, soaked it all in, and then headed back into Bangkok.

That evening, we met up with Peach after her work (because she has a job, unlike us hehehehe) and went to one of her go-to Thai restaurants. We ordered a papaya salad that had approximately seven hundred Thai chilies in it. We were DYING. Eyes watering, noses running, the whole thing. But was it delicious? Absolutely. We had to tap into Meg’s milk fund (but for Ryker this time).

That night we went out to an izakaya with Peach for some much-needed cooling down beverages.

Day 3 — Elephant Sanctuary 🐘

On day three, we had a bus to catch that took us about two and a half hours southeast of Bangkok to an elephant sanctuary.

We’ve all seen the pictures of elephant sanctuaries online, but being there in person is something else entirely. There were lots of elephants, all rescued, and they were wonderful.

Days 4–7 — Muay Thai & Sickness Strikes 🥊

Ryker here — so while Meg and I were in Taiwan, I spent all of about 2 days with a little bit of a sore throat, mostly just in the mornings. I took my medicine, drank my tea and that was that. Flash forward to Bangkok and I guess this sucker had a little bit of an incubation period, but it hit Meg hard. Swiped her feet out from under her… which is funny to say because Meg’s sore throat started the day we went to the professional Muay Thai fight!

So I think I skipped over this part, but Meg and I went to our very first Muay Thai class on the morning of that Thursday or Friday. We showed up at 9am at an abandoned looking shopping center, but in this center, there was an empty Muay Thai gym where we were the only people signed up for this group class, so it worked out perfectly for us — since we were able to get private lessons for the cost of a normal group class. Epic win.

Taking this class felt like the first time I ever went to the gym or the first time I ever tried rugby. My body felt weird, all of the movements were completely unfamiliar to me. I think dancing would be a bit of a better example. You don’t know how to move your feet, your arms… we started off first shadow boxing, which was so strange. My shoulders got tired immediately because they have no stamina. But what also comes along with the feeling of doing something for the very first time is I remembered what it was like to be bad at something, which I think is a feeling we feel less and less as we get older. It was uncomfortable and embarrassing, but I also felt exactly how I felt when I was 15 in the Las Cruces Aquatic Center gym for the very first time by myself having no clue what to do, so I hit bicep curls and 15 minutes on the stationary bike and then left… LOL.

ANYWAYS. Meg and I after this went that night with Peach to a professional Muay Thai fight at a newly constructed stadium in the north of Bangkok. This was also Peach’s very first Muay Thai fight as well! So special. It was epic. Bloody. Your adrenaline gets pumping when you see 30+ people beat the crap out of each other for 2+ hours. It was awesome, would highly recommend it to anyone going to Bangkok.

But that night… Meg slowly lost her voice until she couldn’t speak at all LOL. We had a mute MEG. CODE RED. Well… we went back to the condo and got that little one to sleep. She proceeded to sleep for about 14 hours and was mute the entirety of the next two days. But it worked out perfectly because we had nothing planned for those days. We were able to blob in Peach’s condo with the AC on blast.

Days 7–10 — The Discovery 🏊

THERE WAS A POOL AND GYM THE ENTIRE TIME THAT PEACH FAILED TO MENTION TO US ON THE 10TH FLOOR… IT WAS EVERYTHING WE EVER WANTED. ALSO THE 10TH FLOOR HAD INCREDIBLY FAST INTERNET. 500MB PER SECOND TOO.

As soon as we learned about this incredible discovery, we spent the next 3 days doing nothing but tanning, swimming, and gymming to get Meg back to her full health bar. Tried to build up our base tan. Read plenty of books (Dungeon Crawler Carl was filling both of our brains for those days)… I’m still working on it, because Meg reads at about 1000x wpm and I’m at about… well audiobook speed, so it takes about 18 hrs per book.

Anywhooo… thank you for coming to my Bangkok post. Literally writing this post while we are on the 8 hr bus drive back to Bangkok from Koh Pha Ngan. Again, sorry for the late posts — we will do better next time.

With love, Ryker and Megan Corey.