Welcome to Thailand
Asia - one of the most popular travel continents for backpackers. And not without reason: paradise beaches, beautiful temples, wild jungle, delicious street food and on top of that you can live like a king with only a little money. With just a few euros you can book a small beach bungalow right by the sea and enjoy life to the fullest. I wanted to experience all this.
So my boyfriend at the time and I decided to backpack through Thailand for three weeks. Three weeks is a short travel time for Thailand, so we planned the route in advance. We planned a few days in Bangkok, a jungle tour in Chiang Mai and a beach vacation in a bungalow on Koh Phangan.
Welcome to Bangkok
After 20 hours of travel we arrived in Bangkok. The chaotic and noisy traffic overwhelmed us in our overtired mood. Therefore, we decided to take a short break at the hotel before we started our discovery tour.
After we had recovered, we were already on our way. We strengthened ourselves with delicious street food (a meal cost on average 1€) and then we went on by TukTuk to the well-known Khao San Road.
The street was full of people, it was noisy and there was a crazy atmosphere. We ate grilled scorpions and drank the famous Chang beer. In the crowd I met one of my best friends who was traveling alone through Thailand at the same time. I knew she was in Bangkok, but meeting her by chance on this street was a wonderful coincidence.
The next day we started a little more relaxed. We visited beautiful temples, enjoyed the food markets and then also dressed ourselves anew. We were thrilled by Bangkok!
Monks during a prayer in one of the beautiful temples in Bangkok
The magnificent temples have really inspired us! However, one must not forget - a temple is a religious place in which you must pay attention to certain behaviors :
↠ proper clothing (shoulders and knees must be covered)
↠ before entering the temple, the shoes must be removed
↠ keep photography to a minimum or avoid it, turn off the flash
↠ Silence!!! avoid disturbing factors
↠ show respect
The most beautiful temples we have seen in Bangkok:
Wat Po
Wat Phra Kaew
Temple of the Golden Buddha
The Grand Palace
In Bangkok, I basically felt very safe as a woman. However, there were moments when I was afraid on our TukTuk rides. The traffic on the streets in Bangkok was pure chaos. Lots of honking, lots of people and sometimes no traffic rules. Thereby, the traffic in Bangkok compared to Delhi and other cities, should be quite harmless...
A TukTuk ride usually cost only a few euros. There were no long waiting times. Within a few minutes, a few TukTuks always stopped. One was cheaper than the other.
Chiang Mai
After four days in Bangkok, some temple visits and an on mass of Asian noodles and rice dishes, we took the night train up north. The train ride took 12 hours and cost 25€ per person. We had a double bed with curtains and storage space available. A real luxury when I compare these night trains with ours in Austria.
Well rested, we arrived at the train station in Chiang Mai, where we immediately made our way to our hotel. The booked double room with private bathroom cost us 30€ a night. At check-in, we were invited by the hotel owner to a two-day Jungle Tour which should already start the next morning.
Happy and excited, we set out to explore Chiang Mai. One of our highlights of Chiang Mai was definitely the famous Chiang Mai Night Market.
The Chiang Mai Night Market had a special flair. Everywhere hung colorful lights and there were clothes, jewelry and decorations to buy. The market was huge, you could well spend a few hours there without getting bored.
The next morning we were picked up for the excursion already at 6 o'clock in the morning. We drove with a small truck towards the jungle. On the way we stopped at a small school, which was surrounded by rice fields. When we got out of the truck, the school children were already running towards us. They screamed with joy and hugged us.
It only took a few minutes and three children sat down next to me. We couldn't communicate with each other, but still we made each other laugh and that was really a beautiful experience.
"For the tiger, for the tiger"
After the school visit we were picked up by our tour guide for the Trekking tour . The guide was a Thai and he carried a large machete. When we asked him why he had it with him, he smiled and said: „For the tiger, for the tiger!“. That was a very relaxing start, I must say.
But it got even better: after the first hour, he pulled a plastic bottle out of his backpack and drank a hearty gulp from it. The smell of high-proof alcohol came towards us. We briefly considered turning back, but without him we would have been lost. So we followed him silently. We hiked for hours through the deepest jungle, saw beautiful waterfalls and experienced the nature of the jungle up close...
After another hour, we became suspicious, as we should have reached the jungle village already. Unfortunately, we could not see any village far and wide. Thereupon we asked our guide what was going on and he looked at us laughing with his already red eyes and said: „We got lost.“
Our cell phones had no signal. We were in the middle of nowhere with a drunken stranger with a machete. We would have preferred a tiger. We crossed rice paddies, climbed over trees and even had to climb over barbed wire fences. Honestly? I thought I would never come home again...
After another hour we passed by a small house where a man with a big machete opened the door. Now I thought my life was over. In the middle of the jungle, two men with machetes and one of them drunk. No one would ever have found us here ... My heart was pounding. But things turned out differently, because the man was friendly and showed the guide the way. We were infinitely happy when we finally reached the small village after another hour.
After breakfast we were picked up by another guide and taken to a Elephants Rescue Farm . We got a detailed tour and then we were allowed to pamper the elephants with bananas and mud massages. Our jungle experience was unforgettable!
An elephant consumes between 120 and 200 kilograms of food per day and requires an average of 250,000 calories.
Off to paradise
We flew from Chiang Mai south to Surat Thani, where we took the ferry to Koh Phangan. The waves were high and the ship was constantly tilting. But the exciting boat ride was worth it, because we found directly at the Salad Beach a small beach cottage, where I could not get enough of the beautiful view:
We had five days of island paradise ahead of us. With a scooter we explored the beautiful island. Since it was rainy season and therefore not peak season, we even had one or the other beach to ourselves. During these days we experienced the most beautiful sunsets we have ever seen. In our beach bungalow, which cost us only 10€ a night, we could really relax and also recover well from the exciting adventure.
Our most beautiful experiences on Koh Phangan:
hiking to the waterfalls
Scooter tour around the island
snorkeling in the crystal clear sea
day trip to Bottle Beach
enjoying sunsets
Thai massages on the beach
Street Food Markets
From noisy chaotic Bangkok to an unforgettable jungle experience and the most beautiful beaches, we have really experienced the Thai flair! We have taken Thailand into our hearts and one thing was for sure: Asia, I'll be back!
Liebe Steffi,
super verfasst, kurz gesagt toll zu lesen und mit Deinen Bildern kann man richtig voll eintauchen in das schöne Land ! Ich freue mich schon auf unsere gemeinsamen Tage in Thailand im März 2023 ! Dein Papa