ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK

Bangkok is a huge city that stuns everyone. A mixture of smells, busy streets, the number of cars, scooters, tuk-tukas, tourists, sounds and images. There is a lot of everything here.

One night is too short to get to know Bangkok. Too short for any guide on him.
But it's enough time to feel its atmosphere, to pull out the camera and capture even a piece of this city.
To photograph the faces of people living here everyday.
Food that they prepare in peace and which the rest of the world admires.
Bangkok's architecture is improved and eclectic, as if everything was created according to an individual, rather peculiar project.
Finally, one night is enough time to see that people at the other end of the world live completely differently than we do. Not worse, not better - otherwise.

I'm taking you to Bangkok for one day today. A city that never sleeps, in which it is not so easy to get lost, thanks to the kindness of the Thai people, where I ate the best rice in my life with some sauce, in which I was frightened by flocks of cockroaches coming out of the canals for an evening celebration, in which my cheeks ached always smiling and to which I would love to return.

WELCOME TO BANGKOK

After a very long flight, during which, unlike my traveling companions, I didn't sleep, I uncover the blind in a small airplane window. Below me are thousands of houses and all yellow. I do not know if it is the fault of my fatigue and the fact that I no longer understand whether it is day or night, or maybe some new drimlajner option we are flying. Maybe on the plane it is possible to choose the color of the window glass? After a moment I realize that it is smog. Bird's eye view of Bangkok is covered with a yellow curtain. Very, very uncomfortable view. One would like it to be nice, clean, and here bach! I have not landed yet, and I have to face such a thing. Believe me, the Warsaw or Krakow smog has nothing to do with the one that hangs over Bangkok. Suddenly, wearing a facial mask makes more sense to me.

I will remember the terrible chill from Bangkok airport. You can't hide that Thai people love air conditioning. In the arrivals hall +15 °, outside + 35 °. Fatigue and jetlag are taking our toll on us more and more. I only dream about a shower and a bed. After quite a long price negotiations with the taxi driver, we head towards the hotel. I stare like a child through the window of a taxi to the city and I am a bit intimidated by the image of the King of Thailand in a large gilded frame, who looks at me from a picture on every street corner. In Poland it is the middle of the night, a new day is getting up here. My body goes crazy. Spaać! Although for 2 hours. And then we will go into the city.
When we finally reach the hotel, it turns out that the room lacks ... windows! The offer on airbnb were, but added in photoshop. There are no windows, but there is an unbelievably comfortable bed, a shower with hot water and air conditioning, which now seems to be a godsend, and will eventually decide about my cold for the rest of the trip.

After 3 hours, we are forced to get out of bed. Bangkok calls to meet him at least a bit. We go on the first walk around the area. The sun has ceased to bother so much and now begins a pleasant but still hot summer evening. We have to find something to eat. Something warm and nutritious, immediately.
We don't have time to search for recommended places on the Internet. We quickly realize that this is not the case in Thailand. Recommended pubs are not sought after, because you can eat well anywhere.
We eat our first pad thai and the first shrimp soup on the street near the hotel. From the first moment we know that everything we have heard so far about food in Thailand was true. It's delicious, the stalls bend under the weight of fresh vegetables and fruits, and the smell of food prepared everywhere makes the salivary glands really go crazy.

I eat and look around. I watch people hanging over the heads of cables, blocks of flats stuck to each other without order and composition, the movements of the hands of women who prepare amazing dishes with incredible speed. Everyone is still hungry, nobody wants to wait. I wonder how this place differs from those I have met so far. And I'm a bit touched to the delight of my husband, who thinks I have a runny nose and I have a cold. And I am touched and even a few tears fall on this pad of my thaia. Because I really, always wanted to come here. And now I'm sitting at a table covered with oilcloth, I am eating a Thai dish, I am in the middle of a crowd of locals and tourists, in a summer dress and I fulfill my next travel dream. Is it only me who can move over a bowl of hot pad thaia ...?

Filled up and with greater negotiation skills, we catch a tuk-tuk and head towards the direction that most Bangkok visitors head towards in the evening - on Kao San Road. A street where you can eat, drink and see everything. Riding a tuk-tuk is my second, after eating, favorite activity of this and the next day.
You have to hold on tight, because drivers love to exceed speed limits. After all, the more customers they get in a short period of time, the more the day's revenue will increase. So we are rushing through the city, and the sun is increasingly going west. When we reach Kao San Road it is already dark. It's good, finally the neon lights of this place can light up the street with full power. And there are some of them here.

First impression? "God, how many people are here!" Bangkok is one of the most visited cities in the world. No wonder that this evening on Kao San Road is a wild crowd of tourists of each nation. And of course everyone hungry.
We pass a lot of stalls with already cut fruit, ready to eat, fried noodles with vegetables, grilled crocodile (!), Fried spiders and scorpions (!), Spring rolls, green papaya salad, coconut ice cream, freshly squeezed juices, grilled corn in each taste, fresh seafood and everything a hungry stomach wants. There is also McDonalds, you can buy a pizza and kebab - it's for those who oat Thai flavors, and there are also horrifying ones
We try the world's most smelly fruit, i.e. durian, which also turns out to be the most disgusting in taste for us, and we are looking for a place where we can sit and kill that taste in our mouths. The choice falls on a place with live music played by a Thai DJ and drinks served in plastic buckets. We sip our drinks for a good hour, we can't hear each other and nothing because the music is too loud and we stare at everything and everyone. Despite the atmosphere that prevails here, there is something mesmerizing here.
On Kao San Road there are dozens of stalls with fakes, souvenirs, small hostels placed just behind the glowing neon signs and probably a lot of other things that I don't fully realize, I can't see because I'm not looking for that either. I believe that everybody gets what they are looking for, needs what they want to experience. I usually look for good food and a place where I can sit and stare at people and ordinary life.

That's enough for today. Time to shower and wash off this walk among the crowds, crazy tuk tuk driving in exhaust fumes and smog and fatigue. Time to go to sleep, because tomorrow in the early morning you have to go again to the city.

The next day, we are reluctant to get up from a comfortable bed in a windowless room. Although we would like to sleep a few more hours, the temptation to see another piece of the city is greater.
A quick shower and we set off to look for something to eat. We are walking in the direction of the street we knew from yesterday, right by the hotel, but we are surprised to discover that our eateries in which we ate yesterday are gone. They were replaced by market stalls. This is called the use of space! And an opportunity to look at the inhabitants a little. There are few tourists at this time. Old ladies make gifts at golden chapels, someone sweeps the street, someone else sews, someone cooks a huge pot of soup. Real life.

We don't want to shop at the market, we want to have breakfast. Just what is eaten in Thailand for breakfast? We decide to go for a longer walk in search of food. We pass several continental breakfast restaurants, but have we flew thousands of kilometers to eat scrambled eggs?
We decide to take a tuk - tuk and drive a few kilometers until we see the place where it is cooking. In this way we get to the street where completely nobody pays attention to us, where life goes on very slowly, on which it is in vain to look for tourist attractions, on which the old man is napping in a chair, and on which I eat the best thing in Bangkok . During my whole stay in Thailand, only one dish will delight me as much as this simple rice with meat in green curry sauce and Thai cucumber salad. I pay PLN 5 for this and I give this place my personal Michelin star.

Filled up, we head towards the water tram. We want to see at least one temple and stop for a moment. In fact, there is not enough time for anything else, because in the evening we will have a flight to Krabi. We don't want to sprint all the attractions. It's not for us. We decide to have coffee drunk on the river, a water tram and the temple of the reclining Buddha.

A man accosts us right under the temple and claims that there is no chance for us to visit her now because of the ongoing prayers and a two-hour break in connection with this. Of course, this is a scam that someone told us earlier. Such a man later, in order to fill our waiting time for the opening of the temple, drives us to random places and collects for this very excessive payment. Tourists cut themselves, and soon after they learn that the temple was open all the time.
We buy long pants for Tomek and enter. Inside, despite the very large number of visitors, there is a pleasant atmosphere.
The intricately decorated towers delight, monks in orange robes, in which there is so much peace.
Delights vegetation, the smell of incense burned by the faithful.
A grandmother prays in a whisper and reminds me of someone. It differs only in the place of residence and the language in which these prayers are raised.
And the Buddha is lying down. He is great! The 46-meter statue supposedly reaching the state of Nirvana, covered with gold and mother-of-pearl is impressive.
When we walk around, admiring each of its golden meters, we sit under a tree, in the shade, on a cool floor, and we sit there listening to some mantras in Thai, absolutely incomprehensible to us.
Compared to yesterday's disco Kao San Road, this experience has a completely different dimension.
It was good to come here.

We return the same way to the hotel. It's time to pack up and go for your last dinner in Bangkok, because tomorrow we will be in the south of the country, where the water is wonderfully azure and the famous mace-shaped rocks stick out of the sea. But before that, it's food first.

This time Bangkok was only for a moment. We assumed this from the very beginning. We didn't want to rush to tick off other monuments and places that we absolutely must see. We wanted to feel the atmosphere of this city and I think that although there was not much time we managed to do it. We want to come back here for longer - that is certain. Because reason enough to come back and come back is ... food! But Thai food is a topic for a completely different story.

Basia's hugs