Our time in Japan had come to an end. It was bittersweet, we had enjoyed some of the most incredible experiences from (exploring Shinjuku and its neon lights to cuddling Horace the overweight micropig to buying way too much Stitch stuff at Tokyo Disneyland to having a private ryokan in Gion and sharing drinks with a maiko to exploring bamboo forests to cuddling the cutest deer to tasting octopus balls to enjoying kobe beef to discovering grand pianos in McDonald’s). Sorry for the long run-on sentence Dad! I promise my grammar isn’t that bad all the time. It was time to head to Thailand, the land of trolls and gnomes or is that Norway?
We landed in Bangkok around midnight and had a smooth hour long journey to our hotel in Sukhumvit. Japan isn’t as close to Thailand as most people assume, our direct flight still took 6 hours! Did you know panda bears spend up to 12 hours a day sleeping? Here’s Jessa being a cute little panda passenger princess.
The next morning we decided to check out the breakfast buffet. It was absolutely mind blowing. LET’S START WITH A FUN GAME! Name that fruit. Try to guess every fruit in this photo. If you can HONESTLY NAME EVERY SINGLE FRUIT WITHOUT USING GOOGLE OR CHATGPT I WILL VENMO 5$. NO CHEATING 😒
ok need a hint… here you go !!
Please submit your answers via the contact us page of our site to claim your prize.
Well, the fruit wasn’t as tasty as it looked. I’ll stick to my watermelon. This buffet had the best watermelon juice of my life! They also had an incredible spread of different dishes both western and Thai. Here are a few photos from the different stations at our morning buffet.
Why does a Thai omelette look so much crispier than an American omelette? Because they take 3 whisked eggs and drop them into a large vat of oil… so it’s just deep fried eggs which sound tasty but actually are very bland and taste like hot cooking oil.
Overall, the food seemed like a great start to our day, and we were excited to see what Bangkok had to offer.
Our first adventure was liizard hunting. I wanted to find a rare lizard called the monitor lizard that can grow around 10 feet long and looks like a mini crocodile! Here is a random photo from internet of a monitor lizard chilling in 7-11. I did not take this, all credits go to Google search
Photo from Google not from our trip. SO OUR GOAL WAS TO FIND ONE OF THESE CUTIE PIES 🤩😘. We started by taking a taxi from our hotel to Bangkok’s version of central park (Lumphini Park). THANKS JESSA FOR GOING LIZARD HUNTING WITH ME ON OUR HONEYMOON 😬🥺🥹
We rented a peddleboat that I named Ducksworth and peddled our way around the little lake in search of lizards….. I’d like to say I am an expert lizard hunter and found them, but I’d be lying 😒 Jessa found every single stinkin lizard even tho she was terrified of the lizards.
Lizard hunting was a success, but now it was getting toasty and roasty. Time to head to the famous Thai mall known as Siam Paragon. The drive should have taken 5 minutes according to Google, but we were in the car for over 30 mins… this should have been our first clue 😬
This mall was ginormous! It had over 250 shops and several floors dedicated to just food. We found ourselves some safe thai food and found a couple of empty chairs next to a young dermatologist who talked to us about Bangkok.
Now time to shop! Unfortunately, the prices were even more expensive than American malls, so scratch that. Oooh, I spied an aquarium and wax musuem so we opted for that instead.
The aquarium was very impressive, but wow the fish tanks were pretty tiny for how big of animals were housed in them. That was very sad. We decided to check out the movie theater next. My buddy back in Colorado had told me you gotta check out the movies in Thailand. It’s a whole different experience.
He was not wrong. Just the lobby was impressive. Yes this is a lobby to a movie theater inside of a mall in Bangkok.
We saw Inside Out 2 in 4-d. Huh what’s 4-D? The entire movie the chair moves and jolts and makes you feel like you’re in the movie and sprays air and water on you 🙄😒 I usually nap at the movies so this made it very challenging. Yes, movie was in English with Thai subtitles. You’d think it would be other way around? We reccomend Inside out 2, they portray adult emotions very well.
Next stop… let’s go see some temples and markets and get some real Thai food no more mall food! Except, Jessa wants to go back to the hotel 🤨 It says it’s a 35 min ride back to hotel and only a 4 min drive to a massive temple, and we are already this far 😬
After some negotiating, Jessa agrees to check out the nearby temple… Guys, listen to your spouse the first time cause they probably have some weird instinct and will end up saying they told you so 😑
That 4 min Uber ride took 25 mins… that should have been our next clue. Clue to what?? Calm down there Blues Clues.. you’ll learn soon enough!
The temple was closed 🙄😒 even though google and everything said it should be open. So we walked 10 mins to the next temple. Walking 10 mins in Bangkok heat is a terrible idea.
The next temple was open and was very grand in size and detail. There was a bazillion statues of this buddha statue all over both 6 feet statues all the way to this extremely long buddha taking a nap. Sorry I don’t remember the name of the temple they all had pretty similar Wat names.
It began to rain, and by rain I mean pour. We waited it out and realized we needed to get food asap. I had heard good things about Khaosan Road for authentic food and it was only a 15 min walk and we could walk past the Grand Palace. (Pictured below)
The Grand Palace was massive and stunning from what we saw. However, we were dripping in sweat just in the 10 min walk from one end to the other, and we finally made it to Khaosan Road…. As soon as we arrived we realized this was not for us. It was kinda neat seeing all the rats and cockraoches and scorpions on sticks ready for you to eat. However, I had heard horror stories of food poisoning. Then it just got darker and sketchier, so we decided let’s just get food by our hotel since Jessa was hitting her “I’ve got 20 mins to get fed or else”… and she was most likely right at this point that we should have just gone back to hotel after the mall 😬
We call a taxi and Google says it’s about 23 mins away… we can make it. 20 mins pass and we have moved a solid half a mile 😐 Then another 20 mins and we have gone perhaps another quarter of a mile… Our hotel is 2.8 miles away and it says 28 mins now. The traffic was absurd!
20 mins later our taxi driver decides to take an alternate route not advised by Google and then the map shows… 47 mins!!! We were approximately 1.8 miles away and almost an hour by taxi …. you’re probably thinking why haven’t you just walked.. well Bangkok is not a city for a classy lady like Jessa to be walking at 7pm.
our driver then suggests it would be better if we walk and he had already messed up our ride so maybe walking was truly better. We vet out and speed walk back. Don’t worry I made sure Jessa was very safe. It took us over 2.5 hours to get back to our hotel. We then realized oh man Bangkok really isn’t meant for people to explore or enjoy, and maybe we should get the heck outta dodge.
Funny Story: I spent a lot of time researching and booking hotels. I kept getting told Sukhumvit was a great area in Bangkok … yeah right 😒 think Red Light district 😬 but the funny story is out of all the hotels I booked for our honeymoon I had accidently only booked 3 nights instead of 4 in Bangkok and had a night without a hotel accounted for, and I normally don’t make that kind of mistake. Turns out it was a huge blessing in disguise. We were able to change our flight a day early and get out of Bangkok over 30 hours before we had planned whew.
We calculated our next 24 hours in Bangkok very carefully. We hanged out at the hotel until about 1 PM… then went over to the riverfront which was considerably nicer ( but I see why people say that area has its challenges…. getting down the river by boat is quite the process and the boats are not the fanciest. In fact I was a little worried about the integrity of our boat.
We made our way to ICONSIAM, the famous shopping center in Bangkok. They have a cute frog that really loves being hugged 🥹
FUN FACT: Iconsiam cost $1.5 Billion USD to build and has over 7,000 shops, and somehow Jessa managed to find the Apppe store almost immediately without a map! She really wants an Apple Air IPad with keyboard and stand for any elves or santa clauses that might be reading this blog. Seriously santa I’m gonna need your help!
The mall was impressive it felt like an indoor theme park. We checked out several of the stores, and surprisingly the prices were comparable if not more expensive than US mall prices so no iPad air. Santa, please read this post.
After the mall we checked out a thai restaurant nearby and ordered some pad know. I ordered a level 2 spicy since I had handled the level 1 quite well. Here are the stages of level 2 spicy in Bangkok
It was extremely hot and I was doubling over in pain outside. The workers laughed and said level 2 is spicy we like level 6 or 7. That was it I had enough of bangkok let’s go home….
Our taxi ride that was 4.1 miles away took almost 80 mins to get back but this time we were prepared and embraced the long ride. We have never been more excited to see an airport in our lives. I think the combination of Bangkok’s traffic, heat, dirtiness, and red light district does not make for a great honeymoon destination. However, in order to have the good you must experience the not so good. Glad to say we’ve done Bangkok and even happier to to say we will probably never go back unless God calls us to do missions there.
Pro Tip: If you’re fine with being risky and have awesome health insurance try taking the motorbike taxis in Bangkok.
Expert Pro Tip: just find direct flights to other parts of Thailand 😂
Miles Walked: 15
Gallons of Sweat Produced: 457
Malls visited: 4
Escalators taken: more than 20
Times Jessa was Right and Andrei was Wrong: I lost track after 1
