Honeymoon recap part 3: Bangkok dangerous

After my solo weekend in Hanoi, Sophia finally made it to Vietnam and my vacation high was in full swing. Obviously I was happy to see her and officially begin the honeymoon, but I was officially in vacation mode. I had no desire to check emails or do much work. I just wanted to explore with Sophia and focus on spending time together. It was a great feeling.

We landed in Bangkok on Tuesday afternoon and the lady at the hotel upgraded our rooms for us. Sophia and I decided to kickoff our time in Bangkok at a cocktail bar called Above Eleven. The bar was a multi-storied gorgeous rooftop and after Vietnam, we were ready for some decent cocktails.

After getting a bit loose at Above Eleven, we took a tuk-tuk to Khao Sanh Road. I hadn’t been to Khao Sanh since 2016 and was surprised to see how much it had changed. It seemed like the entire area got a facelift during the pandemic and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing as it lost it’s flavor as a backpackers’ paradise.

Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m 32 and past my backpacking phase, but we ended up going for a quick walk through and deciding to get out quickly. We ended up going to Yaowarat Road in Chinatown for some delicious street food and Sophia fell asleep on the tuk-tuk back home so we knew it was time to get out of there.

We spent basically the rest of our time in Bangkok doing typical tourist sites and eating. The next day, we hilarious got caught up in one of the tourist site “scams” where some locals try to trick you to go to another temple where a man conveniently is located to tell you about this amazing sale. I realized what was happening midway and stopped things before they sent us to the store. We weren’t happy, but it became a good joke for us the rest of the trip, so no harm no foul.

On our last day in Bangkok, we ended up visiting and exploring Talat Noi which was an awesome area that I had no previously been. It was rugged and meant to be a good area to visit to see what Bangkok was like before the skyscrapers.

We are great in Bangkok although Thai food isn’t Sophia’s favorite kind of cuisine. We ate some huge crabs at Ministry of Crab, went to a tasting menu at Samrub Thai, and slurped down 50 year old beef broth at a hole in the wall spot. Although the night market culture may be dying a bit, we had some awesome food at Jodd Fairs on our last night as well.

Overall, I would say that Bangkok was much less exciting for me the 3rd time around than it was the first and second. I suppose this makes sense, but I also believe it’s because I regularly eat a lot of amazing Thai dishes in San Francisco and New York already. It wasn’t like the first time I’ve eaten a spicy papaya salad before like 10 years prior.

Also, Sophia had a bit of a hard time in Bangkok. It was her first time in a major Asian city and I think the craziness was a lot to handle. It’s unlike New York where we lived where it’s largely a grid. Everything in Bangkok is 20-40 minutes away despite being seemingly close on a map and well there is a lot of unique things in Bangkok that was funny in your 20s, but just a bit sad now. I can see why she didn’t enjoy Bangkok as much.

I will say Bangkok probably is my 2nd favorite food city in the world right now behind New York. There’s such a variety of unique cuisines at all different kinds of price levels. For that reason alone, I’ll likely make a stop to Bangkok every time I’m in the area.

After 3 nights and 2.5 days exploring in Bangkok, we got up at 4am to start our journey to Koh Lipe which is a small island in the south of Thailand. More on that tomorrow.