If at first you don't suceed, thai and thai again

Eat up!  Your next meal is just a few hours away!

“Vacation” is synonymous with “Thailand” for Dhaka's social elite.  Just two hours away, Bangkok offers everything that’s forbidden in Dhaka: late night clubs, bars galore, you name it.  Not to mention the bargain shopping!

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.

Bangkok has a number of interesting sights.  We wandered through a few temples, including Wat Pho with its massive, golden reclining Buddha.  But the streets called to us—there was so much to observe and occasionally buy.  I’ve always heard Bangkok described as chaotic and noisy, but everything is relative.  Shazzad and I kept commenting how quiet it was—the metro was downright silent as everyone busily attended to their smart phones—and it was easy to walk down the street, side by side, and have a conversation uninterrupted by honking, random strangers approaching us, and other typical Dhaka distractions.  Bangkok was peaceful, by our standards.

Nothing says romantic like a Titanic-themed license plate!
Bangkok's Chinatown knows how to do tacky.

So after three days of bliss, it was time for an “adventure” (a coverall term that I apply to situations where we’ve failed to the level of research/planning that’s probably recommended, so we’re just going to wing it with our intelligence and pre-existing globa knowledge of “how things work”.  Heck, it can’t be harder than Bangladesh, right?).  The beach was the next stop.  Until we checked out of our hotel, we planned to go to the Eastern bus terminal and hop a bus to Rayong.  I’d read that it could be a bit tricky to find the Eastern bus terminal.  As we handed in our keys, I casually asked the receptionist whether Eastern bus terminal was the best way to get to Rayong.  “Where?” she stared at me blankly.  “Rayong,” I repeated.  She looked puzzled, then said, “Ra-YONG?” (her voice jumped up an octave on the second syllable).  “Yes, RaYONG.”  I tried to mimic back, a bit nervous now that perhaps it wouldn’t be quite so simple to communicate which bus we wanted.  “Eastern bus terminal is really far away.  You should take a minivan from Victory Monument instead.”  “Have you been there?” I asked her.  “No.” 

Moment of truth.  Trust the receptionist or the internet?  Stick to “the plan” or go with the flow?  We went to Victory Monument (Two stops by metro) and were able to hop in a comfortable minivan going directly to RaYONG.  Victory, indeed.  There we wandered into the Star Hotel, dropped our bags, and headed off to find food and the beach.  Food was easy and delicious—well, except the part where we had to order (thankfully every place has “pad thai”).  But the beach……we wandered for hours and couldn’t find the coast.  Finally, after a random British guy on a motorcycle came over to ask us if we needed help and confirmed that we were still really far away, we flagged a motorcycle taxi to take us to the cool kids beach (“PMY beach”, fyi), just in time for a quick walk and a sunset.

TO BE CONTINUED…..For a sneak peak, check out the photo album.