Our friend Terri, who I’ve known since high school, joined us for nearly two weeks in Thailand and we had so much fun together! We met up in Bangkok to start our journey and spent some more time in the city at the end of her visit. Bangkok is enormous and a city it would take forever to get to really know. We had a blast scratching the surface to learn more about what it has to offer.

Our first visit to Bangkok was all about the temples. We visited Wat Pho, Wat Arun, and the Golden Mount in one whirlwind day. Each temple has it’s own flavor and is uniquely beautiful. The temples in Bangkok blew us away. We’ve been checking out temples for 6 weeks now and nothing compared to the size and colors of the temples in Bangkok. They’re amazing.

On our second stop in Bangkok at the end of our visit with Terri, we saw one last temple on our list: the Grand Palace, home of the former King who died about a month ago. Our visit to the palace wasn’t typical as thousands of mourners are in the city to visit the Palace and pay their respects to the late king. They are all dressed in black and travel around the Palace together; it was amazing to see how the Thai people celebrated their beloved leader. The temple area is stunning and enormous. Everywhere we turned there were more beautiful buildings, buddha statues, and plants decorating the space. It was one of our favorites.

We also did more shopping and night life stops on our second trip to Bangkok. We visited the popular weekend market (known as the JJ market) where over 8,000 stalls sell everything from clothes to antiques to pets. We got some tasty food and shopped around a bit.

We also had two really fun nights with friends we met at Chai Lai Orchid, Katherine and Ryan (more on Chai Lai coming up)! We spent one night on the infamous Khao San Road, a backpacker street lined with rowdy bars pumping music late into the night. We had a really fun time watching the people go by. John and Terri even ate scorpions!! Ew.

We also had a classy night at Cloud 47 rooftop bar to celebrate Katherine, Ryan, and Terri’s last nights in Thailand. Cloud 47 is located on the 47th floor of the United Building in the Silom neighborhood. Bangkok has a fancy rooftop bar scene and we’d heard of places that enforce strict dress codes and have sky high price lists, but Cloud 47 was casual and we were able to get beers that cost about $5 USD so we were happy. The views were amazing and it was a great way to cap off our time with friends.

We have one more stop in Bangkok planned after our week of scuba diving on Koh Tao, one of the islands off Thailand’s east coast. We’re looking forward to one more taste of this awesome city in another few days!