All roads run through Thailand...

On our first trip, 9 years ago, we rented a car and drove from Bangkok up to the North of Thailand. We visited various temples, went to Chiang Mai and the Golden Triangle, we learned all about drugs and smuggling in the local museum and we took Thai cooking lessons. We stayed in a local village, where we were invited to attend a traditional wedding. At the end we stayed a week at the beach South of Bangkok.


On our second trip, almost 6 years ago, we took a train from the South of Laos to Bangkok, visited the Royal Palace, National museum and the Red Cross Snake Farm – a place where they milk snakes for the anti-venom.
This time was completely different, after traveling for 7 months; it was time for a longer stay in one place. No more packing and re-packing and moving around for a little while :-)
We decided to stay in Bangkok, in the middle of the tourist-scene. Nice and easy, a guesthouse with airco, tv and internet. Having hot water showers was nice bonus.

Our street

There were plenty hawker shops with delicious food and fantastic fresh fruit. We also had a great sandwich place around the corner.  

Food stand near 'our home'

The bus stop for the city was just some 30 meters away from the house entrance, which was perfect as the kids were going to ‘school’.

Matthew decided to take 2D animation and drawing classes and Robin took Video and Sound editing plus After-effects. All Adobe programs.
In India we checked out the course possibilities, but Matthew’s nomination in Borneo made us change our plans. The Bangkok branch of the Indian school was a perfect solution.

The slow time was nice, sleep, eat, check out the IT stores, go to school, go skateboarding, have some clothes tailor made, watch some tv, watch some movies and chat on the internet, on Skype and hang around with other travelers and tourists at the guesthouse and in the streets around Khao San road, where we stayed.

There are plenty computer, telephone, DVD and accessories stores in Bangkok.

Dr. Fish, a very strange set up. Little fish eat the dead skid off your feet... after looking at it for a couple of weeks, we decided to try it out.

Not sure how healthy it is for the fish!

As we arrived over land, we were granted visas for 2 weeks only, something we found out just some days before the 2 weeks passed. We shifted some classes and took a 6 day trip by bus to Cambodia (see previous blog).

Returning over land again, we received visas for 2 further weeks. Good enough to finish the courses, but not enough to go to the beaches. That will have to wait a little bit...

Bangkok was nice, very touristy though, with all kinds of people. It showed us once again not to judge people on what they look like.

But time came to leave again and we are looking forward to Indonesia!

 … we just realized that we have stayed 4 weeks but have next to no pictures…  :-(
We'll do better in Indonesia :-)