Bangkok

Our whole trip was fabulous! What I’ve decided to do is make three posts about the three sections of our trip (Bangkok, Angkor Wat, and the beach). So, here goes the first one:

We arrived in Bangkok really, really late at night. We decided to take a cab to our hotel, since we’d read that cabs are very cheap. This was, indeed, true. A 30-minute cab ride from the airport cost about $8. What we didn’t count on was that our cab driver would have no clue where our hotel was. I had actually printed up the name of the hotel in Thai, plus a map that had Thai and English on it. At one point the cabbie actually had to get out of the cab and study the map using his headlights! Anyway, we got to the hotel. And, let me tell you, $36 in Bangkok buys you one nice hotel room. Seriously.

The next day (after the free and yummy breakfast – including mimosas!), we set out to see the city. First, we rode the skytrain/monorail to the big weekend market. I’d thought this would be awesome, but, really, it was just overwhelming. There are over 5,000 stalls there! We bought some sandals for Mike and a beach cover-up for me, and had some lunch there. I was a little nervous about eating the street food, but Mike couldn’t get enough!For the afternoon, we decided to hit two big temples in downtown Bangkok. First, we went to Wat Phra Kaew, the home of the Emerald Buddha (which is actually made of jade, go figure). This temple is amazing. I really feel like our pictures don’t capture how beautiful and shiny it was. It was just gold and blue and glittery everywhere one looked. And big. Really, really big.

Next, we went to Wat Pho, which is the home of the biggest Buddha in Bangkok. The Buddha is 153 feet long! I know our pictures don’t capture that (that's Mike by the toes of the Buddha, by the way)! The grounds of Wat Pho were nicer to stroll than those of Wat Phra Kaew, since Wat Pho was far less crowded.Our second day in Bangkok was the much-awaited cooking class (Mike’s birthday gift). First, the class took a market tour, and then we returned to the cooking school to start cooking!We were the only people signed up for the vegetarian cooking class, so we ended up basically having a private lesson. The class was really fun - this was definitely one of the best things we did on the whole trip! We made our own red and green curry paste (starting with pounding the chiles, which included learning which ingredients to pound in which order, so that the smashed chiles don't splash out into your eyes), green curry, red curry, green papaya salad, mushroom and coconut milk soup, and pomelo salad (pictures of just a few of the dishes are below).Mid-way through the course, we took a break to eat what we’d made so far – and it was spicy! At one point, I really felt like my lips were on fire. Then, a bit fatigued and sleepy from being so full, we went back upstairs and cooked some more. We actually made so much that we had to take the extra food back to our hotel for dinner (we eventually were hungry again, after spending the late afternoon swimming and resting beside the hotel’s pool)!