[Blog] Thailand Travel (Patreon)

Hey everyone! I've wanted to write this blog since I first landed in Thailand but ended up just focusing on thoroughly enjoying my travels first. I'm now in New Zealand and roughly finished organizing my workshop where I'm planning to stay for the next few years. 

I took so many photos and it was quite the mission to sort through them all to decide which ones I should post. 

While tempting as it was, I decided not to go to Chiang Mai this time and instead stuck around Bangkok during my stay. It's actually amazing to see how many tourists stay in central Bangkok, I almost thought one out of 5 people were foreigners. 

I knew this from my visit in Thailand years ago, but there are so many Buddhist temples across Bangkok alone. I thought about visiting as many of them as I could during my stay but only managed to visit a handful of the bigger ones. On my way to Wat Suthat temple in Phra Nakhon, I saw a very interesting religious structure which I thought was similar to a Torii I've seen in Kyoto. 

Locals called it the Sao Chingcha or the Giant Swing which was used in the past for the Swing Ceremony where teams of men would swing on the structure to catch a bag of gold with their teeth, symbolizing the god Shiva's attempt to reach a higher level of existence. I heard this ceremony was discontinued when the swing was destroyed by lightning and it was later renovated and moved to where it stands now. 

It was very hot and humid by the time I reached Wat Suthat temple. It never ceases to amaze me how elaborate temples are designed when you study them up close with intricate details glistening with a tint of gold. 

The picture I took is of a Viharn or an Assembly Hall where historically it was a Buddhist building used to provide shelter for traveling monks during the rainy season but later became a place where Buddhist ceremonies take place and it's a place where Buddha images are kept. This Viharn is said to be one of the oldest and it hours the 8 meter tall Buddha image inside which is believed to have been cast originally in Sukhothai some 800 years ago. 

You'll find many other Buddha images across temples in Bangkok some cast in bronze and others carved inside caves. 

One of the things I enjoyed the most when I visited Thailand was enjoying this particular dish which I haven't seen being sold elsewhere at a Thai restaurant outside Thailand. Locals call it the Pad Krapow and unknown to most, this is apparently the most common dish Thai people enjoy the most while the Pad Thai most of us are familiar with isn't as popular in Thailand. 

It has that beefy juicy taste wrapped in light chilli, fragrant holy basil, and a squeeze of lime. It brings out the best flavour when you mix it with a fried egg on top with a runny yolk mixing it into the beef juice served with rice. I've seen Pad Krapow go for as low as 60 baht which is roughly around $1.67 USD. Honestly, most of the people I met in the hostels I've visited were eating one almost every day since they're so tasty and affordable. 

There's a lot of international food in Thailand as well being one of the most visited countries for tourism there are plenty of different cuisines. Posting all of the food pics I took will probably fill this blog with too many photos so I'll only post a few here that I enjoyed. 

This was being served at a café I liked to frequent. I think they called it the butterfly pea flower tea served with ice. I had it when it was really hot outside and needed to cool down but didn't want to drink coffee which I'm trying to cut back on. 

Thailand also has a lot of night markets where you can find various food stalls selling both local Thai food and international food. I really liked getting the fruit smoothies from this place since they really didn't hold back on using as much fruit as they could squeeze into one cup. 

And at a different restaurant where they mainly served Japanese-style katsu curry. I honestly thought this was the best curry place I went to in a while. The meat was really tender and juicy but the coat was extra crispy with the juice mixing soaking into the curry and layer of egg under it. 

Most of the pics above are from the outskirt area of central Bangkok, in the heart of Bangkok there are a metro system, high-rise buildings, and lots of huge shopping malls. How should I say this, the large malls felt like a small world of its own where people seek shelter from the heat. 

And inside one of the malls I came across another Animate! There was a lot of the same merch being sold inside as the ones I've seen in Korea and Japan, though the only difference is there were light novels and manga localized into Thai and a Star Rail corner which I haven't seen before from my earlier visits to Animate. 

One thing I didn't expect was the complete absence of Blue Archive merch since they pretty much dominated the shelves in Korea and Japan's Animate shops. Is Blue Archive just not that popular in Thailand? I wonder.