Bangkok - From Temples to Gastro-Delights

Our second day in Bangkok started with us wandering down to Khao San Road to find something to eat for breakfast. Almost positive it consisted of random food from street vendors - fried bananas or donuts or something similar.

We had lunch plans with a girl I had met on Twitter, but figured we should try to cover some of the (free) cultural things that were meant to be seen around the city. We took a tuk tuk to one of the ports on the riverside and went to visit Wat Arun and the Reclining Buddah. We wandered around the wat taking photos and enjoying the views before heading off to meet up with Dao.

Lunch was good - Dao picked some wonderful food for us to try (I had some Tom Yum rice - amazing!) and then treated us to some delicious smoothies after.

After lunch we got back in a taxi and asked to be dropped off at the train station so that we could venture towards China Town (I love when asian cities have China Towns.). We were told there was a good market area that we should explore. A few wrong turns and we managed to figure out where to go. Up and down the stalls we went, squeezing past people and giant bags full of dried cure-alls.

Exhausted, we headed back to the hostel. Because it was our last night in Bangkok, we opted to have one more big night of drinking. After a bit of a nap/rest we went back to find something for dinner. We picked a different restaurant for dinner and set to work consuming as many Beer Changs as needed to work up the courage to eat some sort of insects. 

The only real plan we had was to buy some tacky cheap souvenirs for the people back home and eat some crickets. While we were eating we were constantly approached by various "hilltribe" (debatable whether they were actually from the hilltribes) women selling small wooden frogs that made a "frog" sound when you run the little wooden stick down their back. Eventually we had had enough and decided that if we could get one for 30B (about $1) we would buy one. It took a few different frog ladies, but we did eventually convince one to part with a frog for what was likely cost for them. From that point on, each time one of the ladies came around to sell us a frog we pulled ours out and played it for her. 

The rest of the night became a blur - Ren and I happily ate a bag of crickets, which were surprisingly very delicious, we consumed many many large bottles of Beer Chang and eventually ended up back at the hostel. Not unlike the movie that was set in the same city, we were setting ourselves up for a hangover...