Spicy Noodles

Well, I am sitting here on a 3-hour bus ride from Krabi to Ko Samui and figured it was a good time to get caught up with blogging about Thailand. Sorry I have been so far behind. (And for the typos and poor grammar.)
Our flight landed in Bangkok during rush hour and we arranged a deal to hire a taxi to our hotel. In traffic, the ride to our hotel should be about 30-45 minutes; yet an hour and a half later, our taxi was still lost. Seemed, like Dubai, there are a lot of new taxi cab drivers in Bangkok due to failing rice crops. Our driver kept pulling over to the side of the road to ask a tuk-tuk driver or another cab driver where to go. Should have taken a tuk-tuk. A tuk-tuk is a mini carriage/tricycle, if you will, that is pushed by a tiny, loud, motor – its risky business and a lot of fun. I think it is like riding around on a lawnmower, but through the busy streets of downtown Bangkok than on a pretty green lawn.
We would get to our hotel ready to explore and absolutely starving. Tonight is the only night we have booked in Bangkok so we want to see as much as possible.
We ventured around the city’s markets and stopped at a street-side vendor for some spicy noodles. They were so good. More please!! I have been craving Thai food since being in Europe and have held out for the real thing, finally! We explored a little more and went walking around the night markets of Bangkok. This is where I would polish up on my negotiation skills. We bought a few items (at good prices I hope) and absorbed what we could of the hectic nightlife of colorful Bangkok. After a few hours we decided it was time to figure our what we were doing for the next few days and so headed back to our hotel, in the rain - by foot.
I booked the hotel we were at on my hotel points, so we had the luxury of checking out at 4pm. The next morning we explored the town a little more and checked out all of the Thai temples, called Wats. They are usually very colorful and have a lot of red, green, and gold paint. Often times you can see Monks walking around in a bright orange wrap. It adds a cool colorful dimension to the city. We decided to buy overnight train tickets to Chiang Mai, wichi is a smaller city than Bangkok a 14-hour train ride north of Bangkok. We visited the same street vendor as we did last night for the same exact noodles. They are so good, I love Thai food.
So we had a plan and now needed to head back to the hotel to check out and get ourselves ready to explore Thailand.
Our hotel had informed us that we would be allowed to leave our luggage there while we were gone since we had reservations to stay there on our last night. What a deal!! You don’t know how lucky we were to hear that. Our bags are big enough that if we wanted to take a tuk-tuk anywhere, we would have to hire two. One for us and one for our luggage. How funny would it be to see our luggage strapped into the two seats of a tuk-tuk??! Ha!
Anyway, we didn’t get a chance to find out. While in South Africa we picked up an extra smallish duffel to carry around a some clothes and necessities for the next two weeks. Our luggage would stay in Bangkok and we will pick it up in two weeks. Sweet deal.
We made our way to the train station and hopped on our overnight train. The train looked like it came from the 70’s, but a closer look revealed a 1996 train made by Hyundai. You would never have guessed it. Thank goodness, too, that we didn’t bring our luggage, our car wasn’t even big enough for our backpacks! When we ate diner, we actually had to eat from our laps and place our drinks on the floor while the train bounced along the way.
Around 10pm we decided to go to sleep and when we woke we would be in beautiful (and rainy wet) Chiang Mai.

Days Traveled: 57
Distance Traveled: 45,236km/28,272mi
So happy: that I finally got some Thai food