It’s been a little over a week since I first touched down in Bangkok and I’d like to share some thoughts about the experience from a first-time traveler’s perspective. To begin with, JFK is a terrible airport. I mean seriously, no free wifi? Also no Starbucks past the security line means I had to get my caffeine fix from something in a can. Also don’t fly China Eastern. The seats were far too small and the inflight entertainment was atrocious (read: non existent). It was also a weird experience seeing people milling around in the aisles mid flight chatting in Chinese across the width of the plane. I don’t feel like this behavior would have gone over too well on an American airline… oh well.
After an hour long delay in Shanghai and a flight that seemed to go on forever (you know the ones where you swear you’re almost there only to realize you’re 2 hours into a 4 hour flight), my friend and I touched down in Bangkok at around 4am in the morning. For whatever reason customs was the part that I was most worried about because I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Turns out expecting nothing would have been the right choice as a stamp and a smile later I was through to baggage claim.
Taxis in Thailand are a peculiar thing, or at least completely different than in America. Walking out of the airport we were hounded by private car drivers trying to get us to pay 700 baht (about $24 USD) for a car into the city. Fortunately, my somewhat more experienced comrade knew the actual price of things and we settled for a colorful cab that charged us a mere $10 USD to take us to our residence.
Some things to note about Bangkok: it’s a very modern city with excellent cell service at ridiculous prices and more malls than seems reasonable. I’ve been to more different malls in one week in Thailand than I have over the course of the rest of my life combined. In addition, I’m told the unemployment rate is around 0.3%, which makes sense considering how many people are on the street selling goods. If you don’t have a job simply set up shop on a street corner and start selling things.
Transportation
The city has two major metro systems, the BTS or “sky train” and the MRT which is underground. In addition, taxis are available for cheap as are scooter taxis, which are a truly dangerous adventure to use. To date, I’ve ridden one twice and have never gripped something as hard as I gripped the handles on the back of the seat. When riding one, it’s advised to keep your knees inside the width of the handle bars or risk loosing them when your driver decides to squeeze between a moving truck and a parked car. Of course you see native Thais riding side saddle talking on their cellphones while their drivers expertly dodge death but as someone who was raised to know what a helmet is, the 20 baht price tag isn’t enough to convince me to make it a regular thing. (Idea: someone should make a shirt that says “I survived a ride on a motor taxi in traffic.” Seriously, jumping out of an airplane isn’t as scary as swerving into oncoming traffic on the back of a Vespa)
Food
There’s really no which way about it: the food in Thailand is cheaper and better than that in America. Bubble Tea costs a little over $1 USD, chicken and rice costs around $2, and all you can eat Shabu runs slightly north of $11. If going out to eat all the time isn’t really you style you can also enjoy a variety of surprisingly delicious frozen food. Buy them at the grocery store for a buck or two or at a local 7-11, where they’ll even microwave it for you. Overall the food is quite delicious and available everywhere.
Closing Thoughts
Overall Thailand has been a wonderful experience thus far. I still have many more weeks to really experience it and plans to travel outside of Bangkok have already been concocted. Stay tuned to find out more about how you can use Node.js and Elastic Beanstalk to easily scale your webapps… errrr things in Thailand. I will leave you with a picture of the Bangkok skyline taken at sunset:
