birthday in bangkok!

After a few years of celebrating birthdays in Mae Sot, it seemed a good opportunity to try something new! So for my golden birthday this year, we headed off to a few days in Bangkok. {And I’m now able to post about it being back from the village for a few days over the weekend!} We’ve only really experienced in the city in passing, usually because we’re there for medical reasons or traveling through.

But we decided to explore the bits and bobs of the city, and really loved it.

We stayed at hotel right on the public transit system, so it was easy to get around and stay relatively cool in the insane April heat of Bangkok. Our hotel also had a little golf cart that offered you a ride to the station just down the road, and since Stephen quoted the golf cart bit from his favorite Parks & Recreation episode “Park Safety” every time we rode, I looked forward this little jaunt. If you haven’t seen this episode, you probably should go find it on Netflix.

We took public transit to some of our favorite sorts of places.

The best used bookstore we’ve found in Thailand yet! Three floors of used English books, sorted by genre and alphabetized by author. And you probably aren’t reading that sentence with the excitement I am writing it with! We found a hoard of books, including a book on Burma with our Burmese teacher & neighbor in it!

Stephen got to visit this store, a chain of music & recording stores in Bangkok. He has stalked their website since we landed in Thailand, and he certainly loved both of our visits while we were in town. 🙂

Stephen did some research and found a little candy factory–really a kiosk in a mall, but a factory to me! They make the candy on-site so you can watch. My family has an odd quirk of visiting more factories than I could name, so I grew up loving seeing where things come from. This was a highlight of the trip for me!

{mixing in colors and flavors}

{shaping and layering int into a giant design}

{rolling it out into a small rope, then chopping it into bites}

{and sharing with the crowd!}

We also enjoyed good coffee over books while we could!

One day we visited the Bangkok Art & Culture Center and loved it! I don’t have any pictures, but we really enjoyed seeing a few exhibits of photographs all over Thailand done by local artists. We also visited a number of shops selling the work of local artists.

And we visited a few malls, because so much of the good food in the city is in malls. Not a great atmosphere, but we really did enjoy our Western food…and this surprisingly life-like wax figure of Tom.

Our two favorite restaurants were not in malls and a little difficult to track down. They included an eclair speciality shop with an incredible French chef, and a cute little Mediterranean restaurant.

We discovered board game cafe–perhaps a new rising trend you’ve heard of?–and decided to try it out! For about $5 each we could stay as long as we liked and try out a wall of board games!

Our last big adventure was a bicycle tour of the city.

It was a night ride, so we met at the shop at 5:30pm and then returned at 10pm. In the meantime, we bicycled along the river and crossed by ferry. We visited two temples, including the largest in Bangkok, and the 24-hour flower market.

Now selling flowers every Friday and loving them, I really loved the flower market! It was just block after block of beautiful flowers and gorgeous colors, all at the most incredible prices. These bunches of roses–four or five dozen–sold for just $1.50! This is mind boggling to me.

The temples were different styles than those we’ve seen in Chiang Mai and Mae Sot, as they are all from different time periods and historical influences. It is always so intriguing to see the details and culture, but also nice to be there at night, while they were mostly empty. We were free to observe without intruding.

As always, it is such fun to explore a little more of where we live and take advantage of the crazy fact that we do live here! So thankful for a hubs that took the time to help coordinate and plan, was willing to ride a night bus to the city, and always pushes us to more fun 🙂