Law and I continue our SE Asia trip to Thailand and that’s where things get a bit sketchy. I should’ve known better since we weren’t locals and every introduction started with “Hey, Tuk tuk?!” or “Where are you from my friend?!” Read on to see my thoughts of ‘Thailand Budget Travel.’
Before getting to the part of where we got scammed, Law and I finish up our trip in Da Nang, VN, and fly back to HCMC for a few hours. We then head back to Khanh’s place to rest a little bit before our flight to Bangkok, Thailand….
Simple sunny side egg with french bread for breakfast at the hostel in Da Nang, VN…
I think Law and I got used to drinking the iced coffee in VN…
Now back in HCMC at Khanh’s place….
We ate all the things even though it looked like someone jizzed into the bowl… so good.
Thanks for the hospitality Khanh and family!
On our way to the airport by Grab (Uber in VN)…
Khanh’s mom packed us dinner for the trip <3…
We land in Bangkok around 10pm(?) and took a bus towards our hostel…. we get off at a transfer but there isn’t another bus coming that night. I haven’t researched much about Thailand or the currency exchange values so I was a bit slow during this time…. luckily some locals helped us out by calling a taxi and got us to our hostel…
I got a little hungry after checking into the hostel, so we walked around to look for street food before bed…
Our hostel wasn’t too bad…
I think price per night was like $8-10USD(?) and that included breakfast (not amazing but it’s something)…
This was the lobby or level floor of the hostel… cool little cafe hangout spot for travelers…
It was time to go out to explore…
All the street foods during the day… we had to pace ourselves on what to eat…
I never noticed how close we were to Patpong…
We found Thailand rice… we’re impressed…
Andddddd here is where the non stop scams start happening lol…
To be fair it’s a hustle for them and we got hustled…. this “tuk tuk” scam in Bangkok starts off by this driver offering us a discounted or free ride to tourist spots if we go to 3 vendors. In order for this to be valid, we just have to “look around for a few minutes” and not purchase anything. The first stop was to a suit store… it was a fancy higher end store. We were genuinely not interested and felt weird doing it so we left. We told the “Tuk tuk” driver forget about the deal and walked off. Even though we didn’t spend any money doing this, we wasted about an hour of our time…
Law and I just decided to take a train and walk around…
Street pad thai!
Our scammer #2… Don’t trust taxi drivers who want to take you for a “boat tour”… we thought this guy was genuinely nice because we wanted to see a temple… but brought us to a boat tour agency instead…
He did tell us a bit about himself… used to fight in Muay Thai…
Anddddd so we ended up on a turbo diesel powered boat tour on a sketchy boat…
We negotiated the price from like $40USD to $15USD after walking away…
But it was just an hour long tour of the slums of Bangkok…
After an hour long pointless boat tour, they dropped us off at Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchawaramahawihan temple across the river…. the plan was for us to meet at the boat in 20 minutes to get back to the other side…
Once we finished touring the temple, we went back to meet up with the boat… as you can guess, no one came to take us back across the river. There was another ferry service to cross the river though…. it was like $0.15USD… -___-
It felt like we couldn’t trust anyone so we decided to just walk instead of taking a taxi or tuktuk….
We found another cafe/hostel type place and stopped by…
Once we got back to our hostel, we took a break, then hit up the night market nearby… Patpong or the “Red Light District”
All the fake hypebeasts….
Worshipping souvenirs…
More “souvenirs”…
The deeper we went into Patpong…
The more hostess bars there were… we even stumbled upon a street where just young boys served with older expats/foreigners…. we ended our night in Bangkok here early since we had an early trip to Phuket in the morning…
The hostel called a taxi for us and took us to the airport…
Airport food in Asia is way better than any country imo…. well the ones I’ve been to…
I mean look at these cheese egg tarts…
Matcha cream puff from Beard Papa… heaven…
Of course after landing in Phuket and checking into our hotel… you find the nearest food market…
The place we stayed at wasn’t crowded, but there were a few Russians… apparently Phuket is the destination choice for Russians.
Law and I pretty much killed 4-5 dishes… I believe prices in Phuket were more expensive but still cheaper than US prices…
The next day it was pretty much like a monsoon with the streets flooding… one of Law’s friends hooked us up with a driver to take us around… we called him “Mr. Mike”
Mr. Mike brought us to a chinese/asian style breakfast spot…
Dim sum in Thailand? Sure, why not? It wasn’t bad for the price!
After breakfast, we went to a Cobra show…
Uhhh… ok..
From what I remember, this show was like $25USD? Not a bad show but don’t think I would go back…
If you’re a fan of guys throwing cobras around… you’ll probably like this show…
We asked Mr. Mike if he knew of a bar for us to watch the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight… he brought us to a bar to watch for a bit…
Of course we had to try some Thailand brews…
We didn’t have much to do since it was raining so we went for lunch…
Pretty good pork, sausage, and chicken rice combo plate…
Our next place to visit was pretty interesting…
It was a 3d wall art museum(?)…
Enjoy these images…
Mr. Mike took us to get some sticky rice and other sweet treats…
I think these were bananas in sweet curry sauce or something… so good!
Probably the best thing I’ve had in Thailand…
Mr. Mike had to go so we had him drop us off somewhere near Bangla Road…
We found a beach nearby… I believe this was Patong Beach…
It was getting dark so we headed towards the Red Light District…
Of course we had to take a tuk tuk back to our hotel…
Cool experience because shit was so sketchy lol…
Fast forward to next morning after flying back to Bangkok… we find another hostel/coffee place…
Spotted a random FD RX7….
On bronze TE37’s too… unfff
Gonna end my post here since there’s already over a 100 photos lol…
Would I recommend traveling to Thailand? Of course. If you want to do touristy things, I’d book a tour or have a guide/local show you around. Thai people don’t seem like they will hustle their own people lol.
Full album here: https://www.danhphan.com/Travel/Explore-Thailand-2017/
As always thanks for checking out the post and if you have any questions or comments, just email or reply in the comments section!
Danh Phan
http://www.dtphan.com
http://www.instagram.com/dtphan