Shanty town on a small creek
Temple visited on our bike tour
Long boat crossing the river
I visited Bangkok for a work meeting in May. I decided to fly in a couple days early and spend a weekend there.
I arrived Saturday evening without much to do, so I ate in the hotel. At the time I didn’t know that in Southeast Asia, some of the best restaurants are found in hotels. So I had one of the best Thai meals of my life that night.
The next day, some colleagues from Mattel had invited me to do a 3-4 hour bike tour of Bangkok, with ABC Bangkok Bike Tours. It was fantastic – we didn’t spend much time in traffic, and instead rode through some cool local neighborhoods. We then crossed the main river in a long boat (powered by a horrifying bare car engine hooked up to a long driveshaft with a propeller on it). On the other side, we rode through the Thai jungle on a raised concrete path, and stopped in a tiny village for a snack. It was really amazing – I felt like we saw another side of Bangkok that day. Later that night, we went out for dinner and drinks in the neighborhood of the hotel. We had a peek of the seedy stuff that night – drunk foreigners hitting on ladyboys in the street, callers inviting you in to sex shows, and so on. Bangkok is weird.
If I had one additional day, I probably would have done maybe a temple tour and gone to a night market. On the drive to the plant, we saw some pretty ridiculous huge elephant statues and stuff, and I heard good things about the insanity of the night market.
