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| Eat up! Your next meal is just a few hours away! |
To be honest, I have never understood the hype. My previous "72 hours in Bangkok" (spent mainly in a
hotel conference room talking about health systems) left me underwhelmed. Bangkok seemed big, Thai was confusing (and
English hard to come by), and the night scene was too sketchy for me.
But it is just two hours from Dhaka, and relatively easy for
Americans (no visa required) and Bangladeshis (one week for processing), so
Shazzad and I decided to turn our May Day holiday into a one week
vacation. I called it a “practice
honeymoon;” there’s no harm in taking a trip (or two or three!) just to test
things out, figure out what we like, and get the “real” honeymoon as perfect as
possible.
We loved Bangkok this time.
We stayed at a hotel that was unexceptional in every way except that it
was in exact type of neighborhood we would have chosen, had we done that kind
of research (thanks agoda.com and the many helpful reviewers!!). Just a stone’s throw from the metro, it was
more of a local residential area than a tourist haven, full of cheap, no-frills
food stands and simple restaurants. We
spent many hours just wandering along, peering at interesting-looking foods and
eventually decided to buy one so that we could try it. The selection was astonishing—noodle soup,
seafood crepes, snow cones, mango and sticky rice, kebabs, pad thai, omelets…..and
that was just what we ate the first day (ok, I’m exaggerating ever so
slightly). I found that I could get my
daily caffeine fix from the iced coffee stands on the streets, who served up a
deliciously cold and sweet combination of Nescafe, ice, and condensed milk.
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