My friends told me that experiencing Thailand is like a blur. There’s so many things going on–so many people, motorbikes, shops, temples, party busses, tuk tuk cars (I called them toot toots) and more–that it’s too overwhelming to take it all in. And after spending a week in the capital of Bangkok, I totally agree with them; it really does feel like it was a dream–a blurry, otherworldly dream!
First I should start by saying: I went to Bangkok to see some friends I knew briefly back in Texas, Cameron and his wife Brook. They moved to Thailand to do missions work around the same time I moved to South Korea, so we talked about visiting each other if we had the chance. Well, my winter break from teaching was upon me…so I took a 6-hour flight from Seoul to Bangkok to finally visit!
Honestly, I didn’t know Cameron and Brook all that well. I spent about 4 months working as a barista with Cameron and I knew Brook even less, but despite that, they went out of their way to make sure I experienced Thailand at its fullest. They carefully planned every day I was there so I didn’t have to plan a thing and taught me everything I should know about their new city home they were so passionate about. After spending a week with them there, I feel like I’ve known them for years!
So thanks to them, I have an epic adventure to share with you. It’s almost too much for one post! But let’s go for it:
You’d think that living in South Korea for 6 months would’ve prepared me for Thai culture, but ladies and gentlemen, nope. Bangkok, specifically, is a sensory-overloaded labyrinth of cultural curiosities. Every day, I stumbled upon some of the most peculiar things, like these:
Thailand is a highly spiritual country, meaning that almost every house and business had a shrine (like the hotel I stayed in); there were also abandoned construction projects because of a death on site (afraid of their lingering spirits), red Fanta offerings (because, as I learned, red is a holy color), and the most interesting curiosity to me: dresses tied to trees to appease a tree spirit. As a westerner and even living in Seoul, I had never seen anything like this! I learned so much about world religions by exploring only one city.
Another thing that makes Thailand so unique: the insatiable need for malls. I don’t know why, but Thai love malls. In fact, Cameron and Brook planned to work me up to the biggest mall on the very last day I was in Thailand–so by the end of my trip, I had visited four malls (and one of them was three malls connected together)!
Enjoying dinner in an outdoor restaurant in the biggest mall we visited 
Stumbling upon a Gundam base in one of the malls 
A San Francisco trolly suspended in one of the malls because why not 
A mango shaved ice cream with mango sticky rice underneath 
I still wouldn’t be as tall as Taran 
A mall for people with too much money 
A market underneath the biggest mall we visited 
Looking up at all the floors of the biggest mall we visited
It goes without saying that Thailand is also unique for it’s temples. Seeing them in person is nothing like the photos (I’m sorry!) and sometimes I wasn’t allowed to take any, usually because of holy artifacts. But my favorite memory was the day we spent at The Ancient City–kind of like a massive outdoor museum shaped like Thailand, full of temples, statues, and other smaller museums.
Lastly, I spent an obscene amount of time exploring cafes and visiting the cafe Cameron and Brook volunteer at (La Mesa Coffee), which was just down the street of my hotel. I tried a lot of coffee sodas (espresso with usually some kind of citric soda), which broke my brain every time.
The “love potion” strawberry soda coffee 
A lemon citric coffee 
Homemade cherry cream soda 
Coconut cold brew and a creme brulee donut — the best donut I’ve ever had 
Coconut ice cream with shaved dried egg yolk, peach custard yogurt, and blueberry cheesecake 
Citric coffee with a Thai tea custard stuffed in a black croissant
What I didn’t expect out of my adventures in Thailand were all the friends I made along the way. Since I was always La Mesa, I got to know the other baristas that worked there, too. They are some of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met and I hope I get to see them again one day. They made me feel right at home! The cafe owners Gary and Michelle took me right in like they’ve known me for years, too! So it wasn’t just the wonders of Thailand that made my adventure there so awesome–but the people that saw me and made it more meaningful than I thought it ever could’ve been.
So Thailand was an epic trip–and this is probably one of the hardest blogs I’ve written because I can’t express it the way it really was. It feels like just a recap or diary entry–but seriously, it was so much more than that! I hope I did it enough justice, anyway.
Thank you, Thailand, for one epic adventure full of curiosity, ungodly humidity, and some of the coolest, sweetest, most adventurous people I got to know. I hope to see you again and eat more coconut curry with Coca Cola (it cuts the spice).
Signed,
Allison the Adventurer
Coconut curry with ramen noodles. This was by far my favorite thing I ate! 
A Bangkok view 
Mexican sliders, chips and salsa 
Thai money called “Baht” 
A Thai cat 
Another Bangkok view 
A truckbed casually full of people 
A taxi bus truck thing with a photo of the King on the back 
A seat on the subway reserved for special people including monks 
Another Bangkok view 
A street vendor who sells some pretty awesome soup 
It’s always green in Thailand! 
A buddhist statue on an island 
A view of the hotel I stayed at down the street 
The sun setting over Green Lung Island 
Nightlife city views of Bangkok
