Sawatdee Bangkok!

Sunday morning I hopped on the bus from Siem Reap to Bangkok. It took about 3 1/2 hours to reach the border, so that wasn't so bad. Once we were at the border on the Cambodian side we had to get stamped out of the country, walk about 10 minutes to enter the Thai side, go through a health check, and wait on line to obtain our 15 day visa.

I waited for over an hour in line to get my visa and once I got to the immigration officer's desk he flipped through my passport and told me that I have to walk back to the Cambodian side and get my "departed" stamp. I must have looked devastated. I responded with, "Are you serious!?" I was pretty upset and I felt the tears come up. I had just stood in line for an hour, I was hot and probably extremely dehydrated. I realized minutes later that this was completely my fault because I had forgotten to fill out the departure slip in my passport that was stuck in there from when I entered. Even though I went through the process of getting my passport stamped to leave Cambodia they only stamped it again to permit me in the country...again. I grabbed my bags and walked as fast as I could back to the Cambodian immigration office, stood in line again and made sure that departure stamp was placed in my passport. The guys that were running the bus company I was travelling with in Cambodia kept telling me to hurry because I was going to miss my bus. My stress levels were high. I ran back to the Thai side, and stood in line for another hour before getting the visa to enter. Luckily, there were some girls from my bus just ahead of me in line, so I told them to make sure the bus didn't leave without me. Travel time so far: about 6 hours.

Shortly after we entered Thailand we stopped an hour for lunch. The trip from Aranyaprathet (the Thai border town) to Bangkok took roughly 4 hours. Total travel time: 11 hours. I don't think I ever want to do that again.

Once I arrived in Bangkok my next mission was to find my friend Veronika who I met through Amalia a month ago. She just moved to Bangkok 3 weeks ago and she's trying to figure out if this is where she'd like to settle for awhile. Veronika told me to meet her at a Starbucks off of Khao San Road, the main tourist strip in Bangkok. I found Khao Sao Road, and just asked several people to point me in the direction of the Starbucks. I carried my huge rolling duffel with me through the busy crowds of people trying not to hit anyone with it. Once I found her I felt so relieved!

We walked around looking for something to eat and all I could think about was trying some Pad Thai because it's one of my favorite Thai dishes back home. We found a street vendor cooking up some vegetarian Pad Thai, found ourselves a place on the sidewalk, sat and talked for a long time.

Afterwards, we walked across the street to have a drink and before we knew it it was quite late, so we headed to her apartment.

I didn't realize that Bangkok was so big! It took 20 minutes to drive from one part of the city to her area and that was via a highway that cuts through the city.

Yesterday morning we had breakfast at a cafe near Khao San road and then I bought my train ticket to Chiang Mai for later in the week.

We wandered around and did some shopping as we made our way to see the traditional medicine shops.

On the way to the shops we stopped to buy some cold drinks from a woman on the side of the street. As we were making our purchase we noticed that she had a squirrel on a chain that was attached to her hip. She gave the squirrel some sugar syrup to drink from a cap of a bottle. Veronika fell in love and began petting the squirrel. This was so funny to me because normally you don't pet a squirrel, you just don't...they won't even let you near it to let you do that. I guess it was so domesticated that it learned to trust humans. So strange.

Anyway, onto the shops...I have always been interested in traditional homeopathic medicine and I thought it would be interesting to see what Thai traditional medicine would be like. We walked through a few shops and eventually found one stand with a man who spoke enough English to explain what everything was. We ended up talking to him for half an hour as we pointed to things and he would tell us what ailments this one or that one cures and he let us try a few things. He was so nice! I ended up buying a bottle of turmeric capsules for a little over a dollar and then he gave us a some bottles of tamarind candy and small bottles of oils for free!

Afterwards we got on a ferry just as it started to pour and we headed down the river towards her friend's neighborhood and meet up for coffee. I think it's so cool that in addition to buses, a skytrain, a subway, cars, and motorbikes we can also take a ferry down the river to travel from one place to another in the city.

While waiting for her friend at the pier, we fed the fish in the river.

The three of us sat under a canopy on the street for several hours drinking coffee and tea as the rain poured around us.
Once the rain let up we walked down a few streets to get dinner at a little restaurant on the street. It was really nice sitting and chatting about our experiences in Asia. I was in Vietnam for a year, Veronika lived in China for three years as a Hungarian diplomat, and her friend has lived in Thailand for about a year. I've really enjoyed just walking around a little and hanging out at cafes for a while. I'm tired of sightseeing for right now.

After dinner we said goodbye her to friend and Veronika and I went to the Suan Lum Night Bazaar to do some late night shopping before calling it day. At the bazaar Veronika spotted one of the cutest things in the whole world:

So far I'm really digging Bangkok!