Part 1: The Conference that brought us to Thailand
I have been lucky to visit some amazing places through the conference circuit with my job. It had been six years since my last time in Bangkok, and it was quite a different experience this time! The company owner and my closest coworker came over from China to meet with me in a neutral location where none of us needs a visa. Also, Nathan was with me this time!
The two of us got a little time to explore together on the first day, weaving along the canals, through Chinatown, sampling street food and enjoying street art.
On our last day, after the conference was over, a miscommunication with a cab driver landed us at an attraction we would never have chosen. It was designed as an ‘ancient village’ with carefully reproduced temples and structures from all over Thailand. It was a little hokey, a little educational, and more than a little overpriced. We had fun though.
In between, while I was at the conference and a seemingly never ending series of meals out, Nathan was exploring the city by day and working in the hotel room by night. He saw some of the temples I recommended from prior trips and others I hadn’t visited.
He also got to join one of my team dinners at a Two-Michelin Star restaurant, a French set menu, overlooking the river. Wow, the food was such an experience, every course carefully crafted with a story to match. The whole process took over four hours and was definitely memorable!
I also had another partner dinner at a Michelin-starred Thai restaurant with a view over the National Palace, and a very luxurious high tea.
Despite that, I have to admit I prefer Thailand’s street food scene. Vendors selling questionably hygenic meat skewers, fried noodles, grilled seafood, steamy dumplings, fresh fruit, and frozen treats out of carts and under umbrellas, for a couple dollars a pop. The street vendors and night market stalls embody the character of this city - chaotic, dirty, loud, diverse, casual and authentic.
Part 2: A night in Ayutthaya
After our break visiting the beaches in the south of Thailand, we returned to Bangkok to fly out. We decided to spend one night north of the city in an area I'd been trying to visit on each of my prior trips, but could never quite fit in the hour trip by train and boat. Now that I've seen it, I'm glad I didn't squeeze it into a day trip.
The town of Ayutthaya was the former capital of Siam until 1767 when the Burmese army fully destroyed it.
One of the things they did was to behead almost all of the Buddha statues throughout the capitals many temples. The decapitated bodies are everywhere, and one of the heads is being swallowed up by a banyan.
Nature definitely had taken hold of the former thriving capital. We saw quite a bit of wildlife including 6-foot water monitors. Unfortunately the most prominent animals were in captivity. After seeing their African cousins in the wild, it was depressing seeing elephants being ridden with chains around their forelegs.
We got to see a couple temples in the fading light the night we arrived and a few more the next day. Evening also brought an extremely lively night market, more like a county fair, which turned out to be the final day of their annual heritage festival. Fun and tasty!
From Bangkok, we started our journey back to the states with a long layover in Taipei!