This Is A Lake - A travel blog

Today I waved goodbye to hot, sweltering Bangkok at nine in the morning, by taking a cab to Don Mueang airport. The whole trip took about an hour and around 300 baht (€8), including two separate tolls that the passenger must pay directly. It’s not expensive, by any means, but it is annoying to have to get out your money on three different instances for one ride! I took a short flight to Chiang Rai, in the north of Thailand, close to the mountains and the Myanmar/Laos borders. Bizarrely, the airport has green wall-to-wall carpet in its arrivals area. There’s a taxi counter right outside, and they quoted the price to take me to my hotel beforehand (160 THB, or €4.28).  As I looked out of the taxi window, Bangkok seemed very distant indeed. This landscape is more mountainous, and where Bangkok seemed in a constant battle with its own jungle, all overrun with trees and shrubs, the vegetation here seems drier. It’s also less hot, at a comparatively breezy 28°C, with the sun peeking in a

It’s day trip time! My plan for today was to go on a day trip to Ayutthaya, Thailand’s ancient capital, just 70 km north of Bangkok. Its history is fascinating: it was a thriving metropolis as early as during the 14th century, became a center of culture and arts, but then was invaded and razed by the Burmese in the 18th century -the loss of literature alone would have been staggering. The ruined city was abandoned, and the Thai capital moved to what is now Bangkok, so a lot of remnants of temples and buildings have survived to our times and can now be visited as a mini-Angkor of sorts. I had considered doing the trip as part of a tour, but I couldn’t find any that I liked: they all pad their time way too much with river cruises, Thai massages, cooking classes... So I decided to chance it and do it all by myself, which proved to be a bit of a challenge. First off, if you want to go to Ayutthaya from Bangkok, you have to go to Mo Chit station, so first thing I did was go get a cab to Moc

Bangkok is mine for the taking! So this morning I seized the day by going temple-hopping. I took a Grab (Thai Uber) ride from my hotel to central Bangkok, which cost me just 90 baht (€2.4), so I’m already doing better than yesterday! My first stop was Wat Pho, the famous temple of the Reclining Buddha, which you’ve undoubtedly seen in dozens of pictures. It was built in the 16th century, renovated in the 18th, which makes it one of Bangkok’s oldest. I got dropped off right at the door, where they charge 100 THB (€2.7) for a ticket. In what I would later find is a bit of a common theme in Thai temples and complexes, once you hand in your ticket and get in, you’re pretty much on your own, with precious few maps or indications as to where to go. I didn’t much mind, though, because I found myself surrounded by gorgeous architecture everywhere I looked. All the walls and buildings are topped by sharply inclined roofs that end in little horns, and they’re all tiled with beautiful reds, green

After a lazy morning at the hotel, today I left Siem Reap on a short, one-hour flight to Bangkok. This officially kicks off the Thailand section of my Thailand trip! Upon arrival in Suvarnabhumi airport, the first thing I did was to withdraw baht from an ATM, and then look for a taxi. There’s a million touts and car desks in the airport, so I’d studied where to find a regular taxi beforehand so as not to get lost: what you have to do is go to Level 1 (when you walk out of the arrivals gate it looks like you’re on ground level, but you’re actually on Level 2), get out onto the street, then pick a ticket from a machine that tells you which parking spot to go to for your taxi. These are the official, regular metered taxis; unfortunately, I was so preoccupied with getting the right kind of taxi that I failed to notice that the driver did not actually use the meter, and so he ended up quoting me a price that now I know is way more expensive than it should’ve been! Ah well, we learn from our