Holidays in Thailand

It was just the time to renew the Anna visa so it was time to leave Taiwan. After arranging the leave of absence, evaluating where it was better to process the visa and where in SE Asia would not rain too much (summer time is rainy season in many regions in SE Asia), we decided to go to Thailand.

We prepared the trip details the weekend before. We took into account advice from Anna’s Thai friends, people who already travelled in Thailand and using TravelFish as a main reference (excellent website to travel around south-east Asia)and the Wikitravel.

Travelling around Thailand is very simple and generally very safe, so it was OK just to improvise on the spot. With the recent crisis of red shirts (Big Picture 1,2,3) at Bangkok we did not expect to find many tourist.

4 hours on the plane from Air Asia and voilà we are at Bangkok! Taipei is really a good base to travel around Asia.

Bangkok

At Bangkok Huali and Mo welcomed us. Huali is a former Anna classmate from Chinese lessons and Mo is a very good friend of Huali. They were our local guides at Bangkok and I think this is one of the reasons why we could enjoy Bangkok so much.

Bangkok, with around 11 milions inhabitans is one of the big “concrete jungles” of south-east Asia, together with Kuala Lumpur (Malaisya) and Jakarta (Indonesia). Bangkok is, with difference, the most friendly of these three cities.

After red shirt crisis, the clean the city center and bring people together a campaing was started: “Together we can”. The campaing is still on going and can be see around the city and the whole Thailand in fact.

The subject that unifies all Thai people is the royal family. They really venerate and love their king and the whole royal family. Pictures of them can be found just everywhere. It is forbidden to joke or to make any offense to the king as you can end up in prison easily.

There are a lot of rumors about the health situaton of the king. The only son of the king is not beloved by the Thai people and all of them would prefer to have one of the daugthers as queen (but this is just impossible and will not happen)

At Bangkok we did all what is expected from a tourist: get a new visa, visit temples, night markets and floating markets (Amphawa), Kaosan Road, buy a custom made dress on a Indian taylor shop, party a little bit and eat a lot (check out the food pictures later on the post).

Here you have the pictures:

If you don’t see the gallery of pictures (seems to happen with Internet Explorer) here is the link to Picasa

Ayutthaya

We took a train to go north until Ayutthaya (TravelFish) to visit some temples and see more Budas. We were lucky to find a local party going on and we decided to join and enjoy ourselves too.

If you don’t see the gallery of pictures (seems to happen with Internet Explorer) here is the link to Picasa

Sukhothai

Half way to Chiang Mai (we did not go that north) there is Sukhothai. More temples and more Budas. At Sukhothai there is actually a park with everything so at some extend it fells like an amusement park. It was a nice visit anyway.

If you don’t see the gallery of pictures (seems to happen with Internet Explorer) here is the link to Picasa

Ko Maak

After Sukhothai we wanted to go south and enjoy the beach… but we were undecided on where to go. The doubt was between Ko Tao (good weather almost guaranteed, lot of divers and a good number of tourists) or Ko Maak (a hidden gem with few tourists, but located in the middle of the area where monzon rains where expected). At the end we decided to take the risk and go to Ko Maak.

After a night bus (~7h) + early morning bus (~5 h) we reached Trat where we made the arrangements to take the speed boat for Ko Maak. We did not have any reservation but this was almost automatically solved at the boat when we found an American guy who worked at Holiday Beach Resort. In fact, being a not very touristic island in combination with low season (rainy season) there was almost nobody on the entire island! … we looked for a quiet place and we really found it. The whole island population (450 people) can be put into a 747-like airplane.

If you don’t see the gallery of pictures (seems to happen with Internet Explorer) here is the link to Picasa

Food

One of the national sports in Thailand is eating. Good food, cheap prices and a little bit spicy here and there. The guides took us to some interesting restaurants around the Bangkok area.

If you don’t see the gallery of pictures (seems to happen with Internet Explorer) here is the link to Picasa

Transportation

To move around Thailand we tried almost all available kind of transportation. Enjoy the pictures and videos below.

If you don’t see the gallery of pictures (seems to happen with Internet Explorer) here is the link to Picasa