Friday, November 1st
SURPRISE! Mantha is from Bangkok, so she will be featured in this weekend's adventure as well :) Our flight (we booked the same flights as Mantha) was at 9:30pm, so she picked us up around 8 to head to the Hat Yai airport.
We arrived in Bangkok around 11:00pm, and tried something new...we stayed in a hostel. Mellow Fellow was the name, and it was close to the train station, which takes you all around the Bangkok area.
We checked in, settled in, and headed straight to bed to get some rest before our first official day in Bangkok tomorrow.
Saturday, November 2nd
Around 10am, we woke up and headed downstairs for complementary breakfast. Cynthia had looked up the HUGE market in town, so we decided to head there first after figuring out the train station. This market was amazing, and it felt like everyone in town was there. They had anything and everything you could imagine, from food to clothes to pottery and beyond. This is a great place for souvenirs, and we were thankful to have saved our main shopping for this trip. Things are cheaper at the market here as well.
After shopping and some mango sticky rice, we met up with Mantha for the afternoon and evening. She took us to a couple malls and a STARBUCKS! It had been a month since our last Starbucks trip in the Korean airport, so this was such a treat. We headed to an art museum for a little change of scenery. Then we preceded to head to the temples for sleeping buddha! This arrangement of temples has so much history about the kings of Thailand, and it was so nice having Mantha there to explain everything to us. We really learned a lot from her.
After the temples we met up with her friend Beach, and headed to the boat dock to head to a few more temples. China Town was next on the to-do list, so the four of us headed into town and Cynthia and Megan tried our first street food dinner. It was amazing!! We had shrimp and pork dumpling, and a new kind of soup (Megan even tried some tongue, liver, kidney, and stomach...very interesting haha). After our first set of dinner, they took us to the Icon Siam Department store, which was a mini mall filled with different food shops. We tried Roti for the first time (it's like a nutella/banana or coconut filled pancake). This was probably the highlight of the night!
After trying all sorts of goodies, we shopped around and decided to call it a night when the place closed at 10. We headed back on the boat, headed towards the train, and made it back to the hostel to shower and get some rest.
Sunday, November 3rd
The last day in Bangkok was similar to the first, but we are headed home with A LOT more than we came with. We had breakfast at the hostel, and headed to the JJ market for our last shopping spree for friends, family, and ourselves. :) We arrived around 11:00am, and headed back around 3:30pm to pack up everything and head to the airport. The train by the hostel was easy access to get everywhere, including the market, the mall, and the airport! We left about 4:30pm, and arrived around 5:30pm to grab dinner, check-in, and get ready for our flight back to Hat Yai that evening. Once arriving back, Mantha dropped us back off at apartment, and we headed to bed to get ready for our last week in Thailand.