Thailand Recommendations: Dec. 2005 - Jan. 2006 Family Trip
Planning a 2 week vacation to Thailand? Here’s what I suggest (all recommendations are a result from first-hand accounts). You’ll start off in Bangkok since that’s where you’ll be flying into. Be prepared for the smog and pollution to hit you right as you walk out of the airport. From what I remember (back in 2005) it was pretty intense. Maybe they’ve managed to clean up their act since then. I’d say spending 3-4 days in Bangkok is enough. That includes your arrival date. You’ll probably use that day to recover from the long flight, get to your hotel, eat some food, and rest up. I’d recommend going to the Grand Palace and walking around there a bit. It’s definitely worth it. You’ll see a lot of gold and intricately decorated palaces and temples, monks walking around and praying, and it’s a good introduction for what to expect from Buddhism in Thailand over the course of your trip. There will probably be a lot of tourists there too. But that’s to be expected almost anywhere you’ll go in Thailand during the holidays.
Next (either later that day, or possibly the next day) I’d hit up the floating market. Most anywhere you go in Thailand via boat you’ll have vendors coming up in their own little boats to try to sell you something (fruit, hats, beer, etc.) They’re like mobile floating convenience stores. But the floating market is like a farmers market on the water. All these vendors in their boats navigating the narrow canals selling to locals, tourists, and each other. It’s a pretty cool site to see. You’ll notice that nothing in Thailand in terms of the transportation seems to make sense, but it all seems to work. How people manage to cross the street, how mopeds don’t all crash into everything, and how these long narrow canoe-style boats don’t crash into each other and sink. But they’ve got it down, and it all seems to work like clockwork.
Try and find a way to see a real muy thai or thai kickboxing fight. I didn’t get a chance to see a real one myself, rather we went to one that was choreographed mainly as a demonstration for tourists. Still, it was pretty cool. I’m sure a real one would kick ass.
The ruins of Ayutthaya were pretty impressive. If you’re into walking through centuries-old ruins, then this is a must. There’s also this enormous reclining Buddha that’s definitely worth seeing. You’re gonna see a lot of Buddha statues everywhere, and some of them are absolutely massive.
That’s all I can really remember about Bangkok off the top of my head and from looking back at my pictures. I don’t recall the names of all the places we went to. But you’ll see a busy city, a lot of culture and history, a very spiritually rich people, and incredible hospitality and politeness from everyone. And all the food is spicy even if you tell them not to make it spicy. Also, get ready for some crazy street food. Roasted insects and cockroaches that people eat by the handfuls like we would eat trail mix.
Next we flew up to the northern most point of the country, Chiang Rai. This is where you’ll find most of the different cultural groups and tribes. The women with the elongated necks and gold rings around their necks, tribes people wearing more traditional dress and Hmong villages. It’s more rural. This is also where most people do the elephant rides through the jungle and feed monkeys by hand as they appear out of the trees and sometimes steal your belongings. They’re pretty aggressive and very, to borrow a word from our good buddy Frank the Tank, forward. I think we also did some river rafting up there too. But nothing like the rapids of Costa Rica. I’d say a couple days there is enough.
From there we went south to Chiang Mai. This is where we spent New Years Eve. It’s a big city that had fireworks, and people releasing these floating candle-like objects into the air that slowly float up and light up the sky. It’s a pretty amazing site. I’d imagine that you’d find this anywhere in Thailand. But it you want a city-scene for NYE with bars and maybe a club to go to, versus partying in a beach city, then I’d say Chiang Mai is the place to go. It’s still got that modern city feel, but way smaller and less chaotic than Bangkok. I think Chiang Mai might have been my favorite city in Thailand (of the four we went to). 3-4 days should be enough.
From Chiang Mai in the northern part of the country, we flew all the way down to the southern tip in Phuket. If you’re looking for that chill, beachy resort town (kinda like Costa Rica or any island really), this is it. You can take speedboats to the other islands for some amazing views of turquoise blue water with these massive vertical rock column structures jutting out of the water, like from the James Bond movie, “The Man With The Golden Gun.” The island is actually called James Bond Island. Side note: There are so many things throughout Thailand that reference the various James Bond movies that were filmed there. There are floating villages, which are basically entire villages sitting on stilts above the water. But who knows, maybe with global warming and rising water levels, they might not be there anymore. Otherwise Phuket is pretty much a resort town. Fancy hotels, people chillin on the beach under umbrellas, a lot of older white European men with tiny Thai women. You know, the usual.
But that’s about it for what I saw. There are so many other places to go to from what I’ve seen from other friends’ trips. But I have no first-hand knowledge of those places. You’ll just have to do some more research on that.
Oh, one last thing I just remembered regarding massages (mostly from what I saw in Bangkok). I remember getting an hour-long massage for like $7. You’ll know the difference between a legitimate massage parlor and one that offers happy endings by what the women who stand outside look like. One has women dressed basically in scrubs, while the other has women who look dressed to go out to club in clear heels and short skirts.