Bang Mah Kok

Danielle and I flew into Bangkok, which used to be known as Bang Mah Kok (we thought this was very punny), at 10pm and had an uneventful night getting to our airport and waiting for our friends Lucila and Rachel to join a couple hours later. While we waited Danielle and I explored our hotel's neighborhood. We walked around for 15 minutes and came back already very sweaty. I am used to Chicago's summer humidity, but I have never sweat like this at night back home and knew the next day was going to get very wet and very smelly. We learned that Bangkok was having record highs. The next day was a high of 102 with a real feel temp of 115 due to humidity. Our faces and bodies were literally dripping in sweat within 5 minutes, whether in the shade or not. Thank goodness for the steady breeze that made it (barely) tolerable. We started with breakfast at a market of street food vendors. There were very few signs and no menus so after Lucila pointed to an egg and ended up with pad thai, I asked for the same. The large plate of food was 35 baht, about $1! I loved Thailand already. After breakfast, we got our day of site seeing out of the way and started by taking the sky train next to our hotel to the river and took a semi private boat ride (with 2 others outside of our group) to the temples.

a view from our boat of the same type of boat and  one of  many temples in the background

We saw Wat Pho, the Grand Palace, and Wat Arun. The first 2 were stunning and wildly impressive. We knew it was required to have pants and shoulders covered at Grand Palace and brought our only pants with us in our purses, the yoga pj pants we had all worn on the 24 hour plane. I wouldn't want to put these back on in a normal situation after having worn them for 24 hours, and ESPECIALLY not in 100 degree heat! But with limited backpack space, it was worth not bringing an extra pair. They were just going to get sweaty in 5 minutes anyways. Not wanting to wear them all day however, I just put them on right over my jean shorts and saw the Grand Palace with a bulky butt. I'm pretty sure we got some strange looks when we left and pulled off our pants in a public place. Oh well, I'm sweating buckets, so deal with it! I wanted them off ASAP!

Wat Arun was an outdoor temple with stairs 3 times the normal high and half the normal depth, so very steep and very scary to go up and down (not to mention they made us put the pants back on). We all freed our hands in order to fully brace the railing and made it up and back safely. Hooray, the temples are done and so are these pants, for the rest of the trip! At this point I had drank 4 large bottles of water (each 15-30 cents!) and had not peed. The reason? because I could not drink faster than I was sweating it out. Each time I felt like I couldn't take it anymore, I thought back to the first day of Coachella, just 2 weeks earlier, when I was frozen in shorts and had muscle pains from the tension of being so cold, and became much more content.

scary steep stairs at Wat Arun

Lucila's purse handle broke off at some point during the temples, which of course sucks because it's our first day of the trip, but was lucky because our hotel was near some great malls. It wasn't hard for her to convince us to come to the mall to purse shop, we were craving the AC! After cooling off and dinner at the food court it was time to get ready for some Bangkok partying. We had 2 clubs written down as recommended to us, I googled the first, Bed Supper Club, and the website said once a month (today) was ladies night, with free cover (normally $20) and 3 free "sexy" drinks for all ladies. SOLD. We bought 1 round after our 2 free drinks (we were too slow for the 3rd not knowing they stopped at 11!). $9 for a drink??? In dollar pad thai Bangkok??? Lucila took one for the team when a guy wanted to buy her a drink, and said he could buy one for all of us. Him being cute didn't hurt either. At one point someone suggested Rachel should get up on the raised platform stripper pole. She only needed one more drink to convince her, and although she was only up there for 2 seconds, I got my favorite pic of the night. After a night of dancing we went home to rest up for another day of sweating.