Our first trip to Asia: Thailand!
06:15:00Hi all, long time no see!
as you might have seen on our Instagram/Facebook accounts, we have been "closed for holidays" for a while, as we have just spent the most amazing 2 weeks in Thailand. It was great, and yes, we now have the biggest post-vacational depression ever!
Railay
We landed in Bangkok on a Saturday after spending all night on the plane and sleeping around 2 hours, so you can imagine we were quite tired to see anything until the next morning, when we woke up early again to take an internal flight to Krabi Airport. The good thing about travelling by plane in Thailand is that flights are only 1-2 hours long, so it is very easy to move around and super cheap! It feels kind of crazy and overwhelming when you first arrive to the airport and have a million people chasing you to try and give you a lift or negotiate with you to get you in a taxi; like you don't know if to ignore them and play it cool or accept the price or offer half and maybe offend them. To be honest, to this day we think that even those times when we thought we negotiated amazingly well, we probably paid 3 times what we should have, specially in Bangkok, but oh well, I guess you just have to think that is part of the experience. Don't get me wrong, it is still very cheap in genreal, so don't worry about that!
After a short shuttle bus ride to a little port we took our first long tail boat to Railay east, where our hotel was. We stayed at Avatar Railay, a really nice and cheap hotel with a cool swimming pool, to which you could access straight from your room. Once we settled in the first thing was to eat some thai curry and visit the beach.
If we have to give my honest opinion, we doubted for quite a while on if to stay at Ao nang or at Railey beach, but read lots of comments saying Railay was nicer. We didn't get to see Ao nang, so we can't compare, but my advice will be to stay in Railay west, which is were the beach is. Railay east was not as nice as it has no beach and the water there is kind of dirty and smelly! haha Still it is a good area to check out as there are plenty of bars and restaurants, so if you stay on the west you can still walk here and go for a nice dinner and drinks.
We spent 5 days here, where the main attractions were going to the beach, getting thai massages, and doing the 4 island tour by boat, which was super fun! We think 3 days would have been enough, but one of the days we literally couldn't move out of bed because we got food poisoning after doing a cooking class at Tew lay bar (sorry, the chef was lovely but don't ever GO!), so we lost the day completely. Still it was a nice place to visit and very very relaxing.
We had only had good comments and references about Phi Phi before going and oh boy, no wonder why! When we arrived there (we took a "ferry" - if you can call it that haha - from Railay beach to Phi Phi) we were amazed. This is were the pictures for the Thailand postcards are taken. Turquoise water, amazing beach, beautiful scenery, nice weather, lovely restaurants by the beach... We had only booked 3 nights here because it was way more expensive, and honestly, we wished we could have stayed longer. We stayed on the south side of the island, called Long beach, at HIP seaview resort, and it was perfect. The hotel was nothing fancy, but it was cool as the rooms are these sort of huts, and the view when you opened the windows in the morning, was just beyond amazing.
Our time in Phi Phi passed really quickly but we enjoyed it the most. We got a long tail boat for the day to take us to Pileh bay, Maya Bay and Monkey beach, and it was great! Maya bay is where "the Beach" movie was filmed, and it is stunning. The water is completely clear and warm and it feels like such a special place. It is totally worth visiting (touristy tip: you have to pay a fee if you get off the boat as it is a national park). You can also snorkel in a few spots around the bay and then take pictures with monkeys (though when we went they were none to be seen lol!).
Phi Phi town is really cool too. We had to take a long tail boat from our hotel to get there (it was only 10 minutes away) but it was the perfect plan for an evening. It is full of bars and restaurants and lots of shops, so it's cool to go an wander around. If you want to party it is definitely the place to go to, though if you are looking for a nice place to stay and have a bit of money saved, we would definitely not stay there and go to Long beach or to the north of the island.
Chiang Mai
Sadly our days in Phi Phi were over and we took a ferry back to Krabi from where our flight to Chiang Mai departed. Chiang Mai is in the north of the country and only 2 hours by plane.
We have to say it really surprised us as we did not know what to expect, but we totally loved the vibe there. It is a super relaxing little city, full of tiny streets with cool coffee shops and restaurants, kind of hippie but also very trendy. We stayed at Si Phum Heritage Boutique Hotel, the loveliest B&B we have ever been to!
Songkran (the water festival for Thai's new year) started just when we arrived, so our plans to visit lots of places here didn't really happen. The streets were literally collapsed with people throwing buckets of water to each other, getting totally soaked, and getting a taxi was kind of hard and they charged 3 times the price. We decided to take it easy and stroll around, see the city center and visit the area around Nimanhemin road, which is kind of the hipster area full of cool cafes and shops.
The second day we booked an elephant sanctuary trip, which was great. They are loads of sanctuaries around Chiang Mai and you can help the keepers feed and bathe the elephants. It is a lovely experience which you will definitely enjoy if you love animals as much as me. The only thing that we have to advise you of though, is that the ride was pretty rough. Very rough. We were 10 people in a small van with no AC at 40 degrees Celsius, driven by this crazy woman through the smallest mud roads at 120km per hour for 2 hours. For a second we thought we were going to die/throw up/pass out... honestly! lol so if you are a bit delicate like us, maybe try to find another way to get there.
We regret not having seen Doi suthep temple, but we were quite tired by day 3 and just strolled around and shopped the night market, which was great to get some souvenirs (negotiating again of course). There is a really cool vibe around the market and you can get super nice food too.
Bangkok
We only spent 3 days in Bangkok and we didn't have time for much, but we totally loved it! our hotel was in Chinatown, which is a great location because not only it is full of restaurants and shops, but it is only 30 minutes walk from the Royal palace and the main temples, but 40 minutes walk from Siam Paragon area which is a massive shopping centre you wanna go to!
The Royal Palace and every single temple in the city are just beautiful. They are done in so much detail and are so colourful and shiny that it's difficult to not take a thousand pictures of them.
Bangkok is hectic and crazy but we loved it. We wish we could have stayed longer and visit the floating markets, chatuchak market and Ayutthaya, but it was too tight and rushed, and we just wanted to take it easy and see things properly! Instead we enjoyed walking around, shopping, having an amazing dinner at Nahm (one of the top restaurants in the world) and sunbathing in the rooftop pool of our hotel. It was a great end to the trip!
And sadly, our holidays ended, but we have to say we truly enjoyed it! it was amazing and so different to anything we had done before, and even a bit difficult because of the food poisoning. But overall, we are really happy and proud to have ticked it off our list!
Hope you have enjoyed this post, for more news you can check out our Instagram.
Speak soon!
Joe & Afri
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