The journey begins! First part of my travel to Asia was a flight with Polish airlines called LOT from Warsaw to Frankfurt. I barely closed my eyes in the plane and we were already in Frankfurt (I might have took a nap while we were in the air). After 6 hours of waiting on the airport, I’ve finally entered the plane to Bangkok, Thailand. The flight was long and exhausting, but I was nicely surprised, cause stewardesses served drinks every hour, additionally we were served dinner 1 hour after departure and breakfast 1 hour before landing. Food wasn’t delicious, but it wasn’t bad neither.

Bangkok Airport

After arrival in Bangkok, every foreigner had to fill Arrival and Departure Card. You have to write your name, address at which you are going to stay in Bangkok (hostel/hotel name), number of flight from Bangkok, occupation etc. There are rumors, that after arriving to Bangkok you must have a ticket for a flight out of Thailand or you risk not being allowed to pass through the passport check gates. I’ve decided to test my luck and didn’t write in my flight back number (as I didn’t own a return ticket) – had no problems during my passport check.

After passport check I’ve exchanged my dollars into local currency (Baht) and tried to figure out, how can I get from the airport to the city. As it turned out, I had two options – taking a taxi or going by train, I was pretty exhausted, so I took a pink taxi. Good advice: when you take a taxi, ask driver to turn on the taximeter – they usually don’t want to do this and they try to agree price before you enter the taxi. If you agree on the price they offered you will most probably pay more, than if the taximeter was turned on. I did the mistake to agree for their price – 500 Baht ($15), and as I found out few days later, I would pay around 250-300 Baht if I asked the driver to turn on the taximeter. Sometimes taxi driver will not agree to turn on taximeter – in this case just thank him politely and look for another taxi.

Smile Inn Hotel

I arrived to the hotel at 11 o clock and as I knew the check in was supposed to be at 2 PM. Very nice receptionist offered me to leave my backpack at the hotel. Of course I accepted this kind offer and then went for a walk around the area which, as it turned out, was not really a touristic area, which was perfect for me, as I didn’t want to live in the center of party street, yet it was quite close to the Khaosan Road (main backpackers street in the city). During my walk I was looking for something to eat and finally I found some kind of market, where I’ve randomly chose one of the offered food – some kind of deep fried vegetable – it was pretty good. As I found out later, that vegetable was pumpkin. When I came back to the hotel, my room was already prepared, I have to admit the room was pretty high standard in compare with the price I had to pay for it. There was a big bathroom with towel, shower gel and shampoo, there was a separate toilet and air conditioning directed straithgt on the huge bed. I will surely visit Smile Inn Hotel, when I’m back in Bangkok.

Bangkok at night

In the evening Goon appeared in my hotel. Goon was my Thai guide – local girl living in Bangkok her whole life, who offered to show me the city. She took me to see the area at night and as she told me, there was an event the day before I came to Bangkok. During this event everyone was dropping wreaths of flower into the river, as apologize for polluting the river. It’s kind of ironic – dropping stuff into the river, as apologize for dropping stuff into the river. Anyway, there were still leftovers of this event on the streets, what meant a great night market under the Golden Mountain (which was just opposite my hotel). **On the night market you could find everything – delicious food, jewelry, clothes, shoes, bags and much more. **Of course Goon, as every woman on the market, stopped when she saw a large pile of bags put on sale. After seeing the market, we climbed to the Golden Mountain and the view from there over the Bangkok at night was astonishing.

The next stop during our night walk was Khaosan Road – the must see for everyone visiting Bangkok. You can find over there a lot of cheap hostels, travel agencies, food carts, clothes and many other products and services – including piercing or tattoos. You can get a massage here (also with happy ending), taste an insects, scorpions or drink a drink straight from the coconut.

On one of the streets right next to Khaosan Road we found a great place to sit down and order food. Goon ordered for both of us and a few minutes later waitress served us with a soup with chicken and coconut milk for Goon and Padthai with shrimps for me. Padthai was quite tasty, but the soup which Goon ate was just delicious (I had a chance to eat half of it with Goon). I thought the soup was a little spicy, but Goon just laughed and said, that it was like 0.5 out of 10 in spiciness in Thailand!