Month: March 2019

Got up early today, need to be at the airport at 11:50 for our flight at 14:50. They all said 3 hours in advance, and we where good to move anyways – but we coulg have lingered for another hour.

We where catching the flight to Siem Reap from Don Mueang (DMK) airport in Bangkok, a 30-40 min ad 350 bat drive from our horel. Probably because of being a weekday, and midday, we zoomed along nicely trugh traffic, got to the airport – checkin allready done online – and then just you regular bagdrop. Airasia also have the self-service booths, so fairly easy peasy.

The Don Muang airport is pretty nice, decent size with lots of resturants and the regular airport shops.. some local stuff for sale of course.

All well and dandy there.. flight 1 hour delayed, so I started googeling nice to know stuff in Cambodia.

1. Get an eVisa in advance. (nope, not done!)

2. Bring US dollars, only currency that works. (eeeh.. Nope!)

3. If you apply for visa on arrival, you NEED to bring 30USD for payment (Nope..no..)

4. … and a passport photo ( lord allmighty, I had tons after project china visa)

5. Note that ATM before imigration run out of dollars frequently ( fuck me !)

So now Im starting to stress a bit, because this I should have known in advance :). So i run (haha, no not really) to the exchange booths. Nope – the ONLY exchange, it says so on the sign.

Well, fuck it then. Ill just make sure to be the first one off the flight, get to the atm machines before imigration (the internet says there is two ef the , there where 3) and get money. And so I did, no problem – they all had. ash it looked like. And we where only fined 2USD for not bringing a photo. I have to say that it was a hell of a lot paperwork to be filled in – we got three forms each, everyone of them pretty much asking for the same thing. Took us an hour getting trough the visa on arrival desk and passport controll.. bonus was a full page visa for not 15 but 30 days. (the internet told us 15)

Our hotel, Popular Hotel & Spa (as i have written probably 10000 times in the visa etc docs) had complimentrary aiport pickup. We where oretty nuch expecting a car, but got a cool tuktuk that drove us the 9km to downtow. excelent?! 😀

But. ow we arefinaly here. Cambodia and tomorrow Angkor Wat. We hit “pub street” for local beer and some food. Looks like a really cool place, totaly unexpected. We both agree it got an Austin feel to it.. Aisia. Austin.

Best beer I’ve had in days!

Another great day in Bangkok, and also the last – tomorrow we are flying out to Cambodia to check out the Angkor Wat site, I think thats gonna be awsome.

Todays outing took us to the Erawan Museum, some 30 minutes away from our hotel. We used the Grab app, thats basically the same as Uber – but it covers both private cars and taxis and also motorcycles/scooters. We threw in an extra 100 bat’s and did a premium car to the Erawan site.. Works very fine, they have these purple pickup-points that shows up on the map, so you dont have to spend for ages explaining where to get picked up. Just go towards the pickup point u selected and they are there,.

The Erawan site was cool, dedicated to one of the main means of transportstion for one of the bigger gods. You will se this elephat in lots of flags and symbols all over asia, but with different names and usually a different amount of tusks and heads.

Super hot ! but take notice that when visiting the belly of the elephant, and the basement area with the art exhibit – they have AC on full blast.. so, just know that at the end of all thos stairs you will be in 24centigrade heaven (yeah – that is the “cold”)

The surrounding par was amazing, with tons of statues and symbols. The instalation shown above here is from the great ‘War on the crabs’ from 600AD.. amazing stuff.

Incredible space under the elephat, lots of figures and icons all over the place. Do spend some time reading up on what you are actually looking at and get some references on the symbolic (is that a word?).

There was lots of benches and chairs scattered around the garden, so many places to sit down and fill up on water and just look around. We went here on a tuesday at 1400 ish, not to many people and we had the place pretty much to ourself, filled up a lot just before we left, and you had to stand in line for a photograph etc.

Of course – exit trough the gift shop, but really not alot to buy. Unless you wanna drag a 1 tonne figure of the elephat around, and thats a no-go with 20kg max on the plane.

We spent a good 2 hours here, could probably spent a couple more if we decided to go for lunch at one of the resturants… but the heat was intense.

Finished of the night with a snack at this place, the one on the left, wonton soup with redbbq pork, great stuff! Tomorrow mornin its of to the airport and to Cambodia !

This is a must se if you are near by. A 29 meter tall beautiful elephant, the copper statue is amazing just to look at.

You can go inside Erawan, he has a buddhist temple inside him. Erawan is a giant elephant according to Buddhist legend, huge as a mountain.

You can tak the stairs up Erawans hind legs and visit Buddha.

The park has a lot of beautiful sculptures. Some og them have sound sensores.

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Mythical creatures from different religions is placed around the park.

There is an interesting history museum in the basement. But we could’t take pictures there. But this is also well worth visiting.

Sticky rice and mango – with some milk type sauce on top. Supernice!

There is a market for everything everywhere, this is the first time I have been at a amulet market. I had thougt this to be a smaller type market, but that was not correct.

Stall after stall of small and large trinkets, some massive figurs of gods an holy people (there should be a Lemmy here in bronze, if you just looked for it long enough). Besides the regular tourist people, this market had quite a lot of locals – searching trough the endless stalls, looking for whatever piece of wood or metal that would bring them luck.

We walked trough the area a few hours, with a drnk stop half way – this is situated next to one of the boat stops, so just one street up and you are at the shoreline, lots of resturants and coffeeshops.

The heat inside the market was pretty intens, the air was perfectly still and the roof was mostley coverd by the different stalls.

I picked up 10-15 small items in metal, and a few wooden ones. The wooden ones are often said to come from anything holy or close to.. wood from a famous temple etc.. They are really nicely done and the carvings are really good. So for a decorative effect they are nice atleast.

I would absolutly recomend a trip here. It is a lot of cool stuff to look at, and its not really expensive picking up a few items. Combine this with the close proximity to the boat stop, and some really nice rooftop resturants, its a nice place to spend 3-4 hours.

Might be some ivory sold here, we do not know. Its pretty illegal – but I guess you would find it here. Besides all the trinkets and amulets, there where a couple of shops there that sold chains and different boxes to use/mount the amulets you got.

Located right next to the Maharaj bot stop, or real close to Sanam Luang.

Just a few hundred meters away from our hotel the first beer brew place popped up on google maps. Its not listed on tripadvisor, at least not high up there with Mikeller and the guys. But that dont have to mean a thing!

we crossed the bridge, and for those closing in on 2 meters hight – we kept our heads low..

Weather is still nice, not to hot, some breeze. Walking outside after sundown is all good.

Most beers was in – but not any locals on tap. For the thai craft beer you had to go for the bottled stuff. We had a couple each, nice place – a mor bar thing than a resturant place.

Nice people working here to, friendly gang.

Blossom weis was probably the winner ! Nice beer, gave it a 4 on untapped! 🙂

We got up today at noon-ish, I think I slept for 12 hours 🙂

We had decided to walk down to the Amulet market (20 min walk). But kept getting rerouted do to the king or someone important was in town. Traffic and streeta blocked off every where.. got there in the end.

https://www.whereistrond.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/img_1591.mov

Ofcourse we sat down just after 1400 – so, no beer ! Not that its that important drinking beer, but its 1000 degrees here, and a beer after a nice walk is … nice

Great lemon drink ! probably way healthier than a beer anyways.

this is also one of the ferry stops along the river… most of the stops consist of a major tourist setup, with travel agencies and fridgemagnet salesmen/women/hen.. saleshen..hehe

Anyways, prices are also a bit higher closer to these spots. But the view is nice, and there is a breeze from the river thats nice

moe on the amulet thingy later on.. i just found a brew-bar on tripadvisor.