Bangkok

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.