On our fourth (and last!) day in Thailand...

...we took a riverboat to a floating market.

Many people suggested we take a tour since it is a little difficult to get to the floating market from Bangkok--plus many tours make stops at a coconut farm on the way. In our case, I can definitely say taking a tour is not a good idea, as it was ridiculously overpriced, there was a time limit, and--among other things--there was no coconut farm stop!

Despite the many failings of our little day package, we still had fun.

Here we are on the colorful riverboat headed to the market.

Below is the view from the riverboat.

After arriving, Chad's first impression was, "Ohhh, tourist trap." And I got that. It's hard not to with all the kitschy souvenirs and call-outs to foreigners. But at the same time, you could catch the tradition and community of the trade, and that was very appealing to me.

Above you can see some shots of the market, as well as a vendor who made us soup right from her boat.

Here, Chad is buying Thai coffee (it was very sweet!)

Ahhh, one of my favorite parts: coconut milk from a coconut cracked open right before our eyes!

On the long ride back to our hotel, most of the group fell asleep. It was quite surprising when suddenly, in the middle of Bangkok, the van driver pulled over on the side of the road and told us all to get out. In my sleepy confusion I just sat in place. Where were we? What was going on? Why wasn't he taking us back to our hotels?

He just kept saying, "Get out. I'm done here." Of course, everyone was pretty taken aback, not to mention pretty angry considering the amount of money we had all paid to be taken to and from the market. Chad convinced the man to pay for a taxi--thank goodness. (Our hotel ended up being about a 25 minute taxi ride from where the tour driver had stopped!)

All in all, it was a pretty interesting day, to say the least!

On our third day in Thailand...

...we saw ancient ruins in one of Thailand's former capitals, Ayutthaya.

It was quite surprising to go from riding the very modern SkyTrain to riding a normal train in Thailand. There are three classes of trains, and we took a third-class one as it was the cheapest. The train was completely open-air--no air conditioning--and felt very old. As the train headed farther away from Bangkok and filled with more and more people, things got very crowded, hot and sweaty. Merchants walked up and down the narrow aisles carrying baskets of food and drinks, calling out to passengers to buy. One merchant took money from a passenger and stored it in her ear! She had quite the little storage spaces in her ears--a lesson to always wash your hands after handling money I guess.

When the train finally arrived in Ayutthaya (about 2 hours from Bangkok), we took a little river boat to cross over from the station to the city, and then we rented bikes. Cycling about and seeing the ancient ruins in Ayutthaya was one of my favorite parts of our trip. Below are some pictures from various ruin sites.




...Look closely.

I had heard so much about riding elephants in Thailand, and had seen many great pictures of friends riding along on them, that I was very excited when we took our own ride around the ruins atop of one of the huge animals.

Tree roots have grown around the head of Buddha. It is one of the most famous sites in Ayutthaya.


After hours of biking around and checking out the ruins, we turned in our bikes, rode the riverboat back to the station, and prepared for the long haul back to Bangkok. We definitely weren't excited about the train ride, but the overall experience was worth it. Also, when we were walking back to our hotel from the station in Bangkok, we passed a group of guys playing futsal and they invited Chad to play. Of course, that made his day (and he even scored a goal!).

On our second day in Thailand...

...we made delicious food!

Turns out there was a great cooking school about a ten minute walk from where our hotel was in Silom, Bangkok. We registered for an afternoon class, and met the teacher and our classmates for the day at a local, open-air market (which was only a minute walk from our hotel!).

Above is our eccentric, ostentatious and humorous teacher, Lucy. He was telling us about the basic ingredients used in Thai cooking while filling baskets full of the fresh ingredients for us to use in the class.

We walked back to Silom Thai Cooking School and prepared the ingredients. When we were finished, Lucy arranged them in the basket pictured above. It looked so vibrant!

Here's where we did all of the cooking.

The first thing we did after preparing the ingredients was sit on a little bench with a coconut shaver on the edge. We took coconut halves and shaved the coconut meat into bowls. Although Thai people generally just buy coconut milk these days, it was neat to see how to make it yourself. After shaving the coconut, we added a little water and squeezed the pulp dry. The resulting milk was very sweet, and could be used for making sweets. However, we were going to be using it for main dishes, too, so we repeated the process with the coconut shavings one more time and combined the liquid for a milder taste. I was surprised to learn that coconut milk is used in many dishes and is an important staple of Thai cooking.

In this picture, you can see the preparations for Tom Yum Kung, hot and sour prawn soup.

Yum! The soup turned out to be so delicious!

Now to prepare the ingredients for Pad Thai, my favorite Thai food!

Man, I was happy. Savory, nutty, fried noodles with prawns, veggies, spices...I'm drooling at the memory!

Above is Northern Chicken Salad.

Chad is grinding down the ingredients to make green curry paste.

We brought the ingredients outside, fried them up with a little oil and coconut milk, and out came this:

Delicious Thai Green Curry

Last was dessert. Bananas with steamed coconut milk and palm sugar. By this point --as you might imagine--we were getting quite full, but how could we stop eating when we had this yummy dish as a finale?

Bellies full, our class huddled up for a group shot. With a New Zealander, Korean, three Austrians, four Americans (including ourselves) and a Scotsman, we had quite a diverse group. It was fun getting to know them while we cooked!

Overall, we cooked 5 dishes, eating in between each one. In total it was about a 4 hour period of cooking glory, and it turned out to be one of our favorite things about our trip.

On our first day in Thailand...

...we saw amazing architecture.

This is Chad standing at one of the entrances to Wat Pho, a temple.

We were really impressed by the temple colors and detail. We were also impressed by the giant sleeping Buddha:

After Wat Pho, we headed to the Grand Palace.

It may be hard to see here, but there are mermaids in this mural. It was my favorite mural there.

(Toothless!)

Above is the entrance to the palace.

I know there are many pictures here, but it was very hard to eliminate any! We hope you find the pictures as interesting as we felt the sites were in person. And in our next post on day two, we hope you don't faint with hunger! Food awaits!