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One Week in Bangkok

We were soooo excited to arrive in Thailand.  Everybody loves it!  We love the food!  It will be so different from North and South America!  We’ll break the seal on Asia!

To be fair to Thailand, our expectations were way too high.  The truth of the matter is, you can’t love an entire country.  There is going to be stuff you love, stuff you hate, and all kinds of in between.

Bangkok is a big city folks.  There a ton of areas to explore, and we just scratched the surface.  I think my advice to visitors would be to avoid the super touristy areas (like the area around the grand palace and kao san road).  The people there are really out to take your money.  I’d probably research other more local neighborhoods, and spend time there instead.

There are pockets of the city that are quite modern and nice (like the area near the stadium subway station).  The touristy area is quite dirty and run down IMO.  We’ve established that the Crawford family most enjoys nature.  Big cities have their place, but in small doses.

A big challenge for Kim has been finding lodging that is comfortable and provides some level of separation between the kids and our beds.  It seems that outside of the US, rooms might accommodate up to 3, but not 4 people.  With 4 you are almost always forced to get two rooms, or some sort of suite.  She had a particularly difficult time in Bangkok (especially to stay in a reasonable budget).  We ended up at the “Lamphu Tree” Hotel.  It was kind of a boutique hotel just a few blocks south of Kao San road.  It’s on the canal, and has a pool.  It’s fine. Our room was pretty bad though.   Basically we had a king bed, a sofa (that Kane slept on), and a roll-away bed (that Kat slept on).  Our room was basically one big bed.  It was fine.

The kids loved the pool.  We used the pool quite a bit in the afternoons.  It helped with the incredible heat.  The breakfast buffet was really good too.  The people were nice.

Our first afternoon, we walked over to Kao San road for lunch.  After that, we just hung out and the hotel, swam, and rested up.  We were pretty beat from the trip.  We left Quito at about 6am and flew to Miami.  There we had to go through immigrations, get our luggage and re-check it through customs.  We had just a little time to connect to LAX.  At LAX, we were changing airlines, so we had to get our luggage again to re-check.  It issue was, we were missing 2 of our bags!  There were two issues… one the baggage was mis-handled by American between Miami and LAX.  One bag showed up about an hour late.  The other is one of our bags didn’t make it onto the right flight, it was coming in on the following flight.  Thankfully, Kim had enough time to get it and make it over to our flight to Manila (barely).  However, it was a huge hassle to sort this out etc.  American Airlines once again showing it’s ineptitude!

From LAX, we had a doozy of a 13 hour flight to Manila.  A 6 hour layover in Manila, then another flight to Bangkok.  I’ve never experienced anything like this, let alone my kids.  They did great, but everybody was wiped in Bangkok for a couple of days.

The next day, we went to the grand palace.  It was pretty cool, and we got some good photos.  Our guide was nice enough, but his english was pretty bad, so it was difficult to understand.  It was scorchingly hot!  After the palace, we went to the temple with the huge reclining Buddha.  Kat wanted to put coins in the pots for good luck, so she did that.

After that, we got our first Tuk-Tuk ride back to our hotel.  This is a good place for a side note on Taxis in Bangkok.  90% of them our trying to rip you off!  Here are the scams that we saw:

1) Charging you a flat rate rather than running a meter.  We literally had taxis try to charge us 6 times what the rate should be.  Often times, we’d have to go through 4/5 taxis to get one to run the meter.

2) Driving around in circles to increase the fare.  Twice in one day, we had drivers do this.  Granted it can be confusing to get onto the freeway, but these guys are going 5 miles out of the way.  Get GPS, and learn how to get around, at least to keep them honest!

3) Taking the side roads vs the freeway.  The expressway is a godsend in Bangkok, but you do have to pay a toll (a long trip will cost you 75 Baht ($2.50), a short one 50 Baht).  But taxi drivers sometimes won’t mention it as an option, they will simply take the long/slow way.

4) Tuk-Tuk drivers forcing you to stop at a suit or jewelry shop in order to get commission.  This never actually happened to us, but it happened plenty, and because we knew about it, we were sure to make certain we were being taken directly.  Tuk-Tuks don’t have meters BTW.

5) Printing up fake “rate charts”.  When we returned to Bangkok from Siem Reap on the bus, we were swarmed by drivers saying “taxi?, taxi?”.  Kim got one to agree to run the meter, and he helped us carry our bags.  He took us outside the station and around the corner (not the taxi stand), and started putting our bags in the back of an SUV (not even a taxi).  They said it would 1800 Baht.  We knew from before it should be about 300 total including the toll.  They produced a laminated rate sheet that showed 1800 Baht for outside of Bangkok.  We were already pulling our bags out of the car to go to the taxi stand, and they were arguing, and dropping the price.  I think he got down to 600 Baht as we walked away.

Be very careful, with the Taxis if you go here!

The next day, was a big one.  We started out by going to the MBK Mall.  I wanted to get a SIM card for my phone, and we wanted to eat at “The Pizza Company”, I needed a new lens cap fro my camera, and we were generally interested in what electronics might be available for “cheap”.  The mall is pretty cool.  It’s got a bit of grunge to it, but we liked that.  Siam Paragon and Siam Center are a bit more upscale (and not too far away actually).  I found a lens cap, and got a SIM card.  I found out later that I got scammed on the SIM card.  They told me it was unlimited Data (for the month), but it turned out to be only 250 MB of data.  After I ran out, I had to go put more money on it.  The kids bought “fake iPods”, and I bought a couple of nice portable bluetooth speakers.

After that we had planned to meet-up with another traveling family from Canada, at the Mochit Market.  This is the huge weekend market in Bangkok.  It was almost unbearably hot, but the market was neat, and we rode the BTS (El Train) for the first time to the market.  We bought some random souvenirs, and met up with the Mitchells at 3pm.  From there, we all took taxis to the place where the Mitchells were staying, the kids swam, and we ordered in some home cooked thai food.  It was really great to swap stories and to hear about what they were able to do.  We were so impressed with how they found a way to do Europe on a budget!  I wish we could have done that.  Nice people, and neat family.  Mark even played the bagpipes for us!

The next day, we went to a really great interactive museum on the history of Thailand and culture.  We learned a ton, and really enjoyed being able to “TOUCH EVERYTHING!”.  After the museum, we found our way to the train station to purchase our tickets to Chiang Mai, then I think we returned to the hotel to swim.

We took at taxi to one of the floating markets just East of town.  It was probably the most authentic thing we did there.  The market was great with flowers, fruits, and prepared foods of all kinds.  There was a band playing traditional Thai instruments.  We got great fruit shakes, and sampled some delicious foods.  There were huge catfish in the river that we fed with (loaves!) of bread.  We watched in awe as the ladies prepared fish and seafood on small “kitchen boats”.

Another day, we went back down near the MBK and found the Siam Ocean exhibit.  This is basically a really impecably maintained Aquarium.  This was another “full circle” moment (at least for me), as I recalled the terrific aquarium in Stanley Park (Vancouver).

The last major thing we did before we left, was meet up with our friends (the Watanabe’s) real estate agent to take a look at some property they were considering renting.  We met her at a coffee shop right off of the BTS.  She picked us up on the street there.  When she stopped to let us in, she was rear-ended by the car behind her.  It was an awkward way to introduce herself!  I took a picture of the assailant just to be helpful.

The apartment turned out to be not too great, and so they are going to wait unit they are back in town to tour properties themselves before they pull the trigger.  It was fun though to see a couple of new areas in the city, and think about how exciting it will be for them to live there for at least a year!  The second apartment that we only drove by was in the “Thong Lo” area, which interestingly had caught my eye when we were on the BTS.  I know there is a good joke in there somewhere…. “Where did Anthony get caught with his pants down?”   “Thong Lo”!

In summary, hindsight is always 20/20.  I can’t imagine coming to Thailand and NOT spending some time in Bangkok, BUT given how much we enjoyed Siem Reap and Chiang Mai, I think we should have spent the bulk of this time in Laos or Vietnam.  It turns out that we just really don’t like big cities all that much.  Bangkok is a big city, and there is no getting around that!

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4 Days in Quito is better than 5 Days in Quito!

We ended our Ecuadorian trip in Quito mostly because our flight out was scheduled from there.  I get the feeling that everybody who visits Ecuador spends some time here.  It’s not a highlight.

Given the right mood and motivation, you could probably see what you need to see in 2 days tops. It’s fine, it’s a fairly large city all-in-all, but because of the geography, it’s really long and narrow.  The valley constrains in in one direction. As a result, each area feels like a slightly smaller city than it really is, but it is a pain to get around.  Cabs are expensive, and traffic is bad.

We had our driver from our bike ride down Cotopaxi drop us off near the place we would be staying, the “South American Explorers Club”.  We recommend joining the club if you plan to visit South America.  It’s a great resource for you, not the least of which is getting advice from experienced gringos and getting tapped into some nice activities (like organized hikes, presentations, or bbqs).

The clubhouse was quite nice compared to the other ones we had visited (Lima and Cusco).  We had two rooms and shared a bathroom.  We found out later that Glenn, another guest at the club had moved out of one of the rooms so that we could be in rooms next to each other.  Glenn turned out to be a super interesting guy.. he’s been traveling in South America for several years on a motorcycle and has made several films.  One of his films he made about “Australians in Peru”, which chronicled 2 people, one of which is Jane the owner of our favorite restaurant in Cusco, “Jacks Cafe”.  It was really interesting to watch it and learn more details about Jane’s history in Peru.  The other guy featured was an explorer and also super interesting, though we never got to meet him in Peru.  (though we did meet another explorer who used to work with him, and subsequently had a falling out).

The club was fun, and I think it was like 50 bucks for both rooms, which was a nice break from more expensive options.  We enjoyed chatting with and getting to know the other “guys” (they were all single men), living at the club.  The location is less than ideal being a bit away from the central historical district.  It turns out to be on a dangerous street.  At night, cars totally ignore the red lights, and simply speed down the road.  We heard/saw wrecks two nights in a row.  The second night, we were watching Glenn’s movie, and we heard screeching and a crash.  After the movie, we looked out, and there were people standing around a guy who had been knocked off his motorcycle.  You could see that they were solemn, and one guy was pacing anxiously a few feet away (and kind of hopping).  The medical workers were not doing much with any urgency, then they loaded him into the ambulance, nobody got in with him, then the ambulance sat there for another half hour, and when it left there were no lights.  The person was gone.  It was such a strange experience to watch from 100 yards away through a window.  So sad.

When we met John (the club manager), one of the first things we noticed was that he was “reluctantly helpful”.  He had trained himself to execute his job function as host, but he was not naturally a nice person.  We ran into this several scenario times on the trip.  One of the first things John told us was “you can’t use 4 days in Quito”.  Kind of an odd way to start as our host!  He also proceeded to tell us about a great hike he had lined up for Sunday.  We said “Great, we’re in”, and then he told us essentially, we’d have to wait until Sunday morning to see if there was room.  He wanted to give priority to his “hiking club” (even walkups who didn’t RSVP!).  We ended up declining due to the impracticality of getting the kids ready, packing lunch etc etc.  It’s a good thing we did decline, because the bus he ordered came way smaller than he thought, and there was indeed no room for us.

We managed to have some fun in Quito despite all of the negativity.

1) We took the cable car up to the top of the mountain.  Great views, but we didn’t spend too much time up there or do any hiking.  The kids had spied an amusement park at the bottom of the hill, and were eager to check it out.

2) We went to Vulqano Park.  I was a little concerned that at first, it looked like this place was mostly abandoned and was in disrepair.  It turned out to be great,  big enough to have some really interesting rides, but small enough to feel intimate.  We bought a card and put 20 bucks on it.  You pay for the rides by swiping the card (like a huge arcade).  The place was pretty dead that day, and as a result, Kane was often the only rider on a ride.  That was quite strange.  Kat LOVED the bumper cars.  We ended up going here again the next day, while Kim enjoyed some time to herself to do some planning for SE Asia and blogging.

3) We visited the equator.  There are a few options for this, but we chose the middle of the road (not the ancient location or the huge government sponsored place).  There was a neat “museum” there, and we learned a bit about the indigenous peoples of the area.  This included learning how to make shrunken heads, and how to wear penis straps to avoid fish swimming up your urine stream into your ureter.

The highlight of the visit (at least for me), was the water vortex demonstration with the portable sink.  They put a little sink on rollers, so they could move it between hemispheres.  They put little leaves in it, so you could see the vortex more easily.  First, they poured a bucket in on the equator.  It drained straight down with no vortex.  Then, they moved to the southern hemisphere.  Here, a vortex formed, spinning counter clockwise.  The, in the northern hemisphere (about 10 feet from the line), the water spun clockwise.  I would not have imagined this could be observed so close to the equator!  It was great.

We also got to try to balance eggs on nails (it’s easier on the equator), and the kids volunteered for a test where you try to resist your arms being pulled down (and it’s easier to resist when not on the equator)!

4) We toured Quito on a “big red bus”.  Ironically, we ended up doing this on our last day there.  The highlight was going to the top of the hill where the huge statue of the virgin is located.  It provided a great 360 view of the town.

5) The rest of the time was pretty low key, messing around.  Visiting the mall, going to the grocery store, going out to eat, hanging out at the club talking with the guys.  The last day there, we decided to ship some stuff back the states (like school books, and winter clothes that we would not need in Thailand).  We had enough stuff for two small boxes (perhaps 30 lbs).  It was quite an adventure to find the post office, and then to find boxes to use.

Once we got our boxes, and took them to be weighed, we discovered that it was gonna cost almost 300 bucks!  So we made another pass, and consolidated to 1 box for half the cost.  We ended up giving the extra clothing to the lady working with us at the counter.  She had kids and was excited to get some nice clothes.  It felt like an accomplishment, and I really had doubts whether we’d ever see that box.  (it did arrive!).

So all in all, Quito was fine, but if you have limited time to visit Ecuador, I can’t imagine you’d want to spend more than 1-2 days here.  Compared to the Galapagos, the beach (presumably), Cuenca, Banos, Chimborazo, Quilotoa, and Cotopaxi, quito is just kind of an OK big city.  I will say this, it was easy to find good food there…. Chinese, Pizza, Mexican (we had it all, and it was quite good).

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