Bangkok: City of angels, and the skytrain was built for them

Despite we spent only a short time in Bangkok, it became a defining experience to us on the trip. On this cycling trip, whenever we entered a new country, after the first 2-3 days which were the “how cool this place is”-days, we always figured out some annoying features. However, in Bangkok, we had an absolute pleasant stay. The whole 6 days were spent in the happy “honeymoon period”. This amazed us!

Skytrain line among skyscrapers

The stopover in Bangkok was not in our original plan. Stop by Thailand was the cheapest way to fly from India to China and we had decided to discover this capital city with Linh’s family who came to visit us from Vietnam. At the first look in the city, we saw clean roads, organized traffic and nice, new buildings. When we went sightseeing, we took my favorite way of transportation: skytrain. It is a neat, clean and modern sub-urban train, running about 15 m above the ground. The train is equipped with screens playing ads and showing the name of the next stations - an absolutely stunning engineering piece of art! From the window, we saw dozens of shiny skyscrapers, beautiful parks and some Buddhist temples. 

Typically Thai: Buddhist temples and elephants

Sculptures get dressed. Money is hanging on the wire.

The Thai food was also gorgeous: no restrictions; every animal and plant is edible and there they were cooked fresh! The lemon grass gave a very fresh taste to the dishes and the chilli was a magic. The night markets could become gourmet food tours, but it was a good chance for a beer and some live music. Bubble tea shops were selling good quality iced milk-tea and the food in cheaper buffets were still tasty. Above all, locals were really friendly, helpful and good at speaking English.

My wife's family

Buddhist monastery in the foreground, skyscrapers in the background

We loved the young spirit of Bangkok. Everything looked new, modern, appealing. It was so exciting that everything was growing. But they don’t forget about the past, important historical buildings and religious temples aren't demolished - they are indeed in good shape too. Being in Iran and India felt like traveling in the past, meanwhile being Bangkok felt like living in the future. From this perspective, Europe also seemed to live in the past; clinging on the history and on the old; ramshackling churches, meanwhile modern Asian cities built up the new era already. 

View from the apartment of the Warmshowers host. Warmshowers is awesome!

This is the same pool as on the picture above

Our experience in Bangkok, based on 6 days (four nights in the suburb, one near the city centre at a Warmshowers host and one at the airport), is very onesided: absolutely positive. This was the first and perhaps the only place which we didn’t want to leave but settle down there. We got to get back to this heaven once!

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