Well gang, after a lot of excitement, planning, organizing of extra bags filled with curry and two tickets in hand, we set off from Chiang Mai ready for a bit of laid back time & banh mi. ….only to be halted in our tracks at the airport after being asked “do you have your visas?” For Vietnam.
Did you know this? I, admittedly, am a bit sucky with the details of these kinds of things. It makes it seem like I am an entitled traveller, thinking who *wouldn’t* want Canadians to come visit???
But actually it’s just bird-brainedness.
When we landed in Thailand the nice man at immigration stamped our passports with a 60 day visa and sent us on our merry way. Vietnam is stricter. They do have something CALLED a Visa On Arrival, but that basically means you have to apply 3-5 weeks beforehand and then print out the visa to be shown at immigration when you land. It seems mislabelled, yes?
So after some frantic running around in (one of! - fool me once…) Bangkok’s airport, storing luggage and finding out that we could get a ‘last-minute’ visa but it would still take 48 hours and cost 400 USD, we settled on staying in Bangkok until we heard back from the Evisa applications we put in.
Given that we slept for about 5 hours before we left, dealt with massive amounts of stress on the travel day, it was a couple of days before we settled down enough to enjoy the city.
And what a CITY. The sidewalks are uneven, the traffic is endless and when you cross the road you put your hand out like you’re patting a large dog, signalling to the drivers “I’m walking, please don’t hit me”.
We found some Shan food (Burmese cuisine), peeked around Chinatown and ate some Michelin bib gourmand shrimp dumplings in a small alleyway.
Life pro tip: find a food tour and follow them! Scott and I only made it 2 stops before we were giggling too much to keep going.
We hopped on the very clean, very prompt metro and rode out to a massive night vintage market, where we found Mecca.
THIS is where all the cool clothes go from Value Village, my friends. Endless military surplus, bags, hats, aged denim in incredible condition, denim overalls, leather stores, it never ends. I don’t even think we got through half of it. It was funny to watch all these young kids looking for big baggy clothing the same way I did in the 90s. I mean, they’re probably WEARING the clothes I wore in the 90s…Boxy t-shirts & massive jeans. Letterman jackets from the 60s - how do they end up there?
Scott has been hunting in all our travels and online for his very specific newsboy cap. He found 1 in Singapore that isn’t great quality but was only $20 so he purchased it. When he asked a guy at this night market about it, the guy not only immediately knew what it was called but then pulled out 2 BAGS of these hats and told us to go through them and pick out what we wanted. Nuts, I tell you.
We had some delicious sweet potato balls, pineapple rice & shrimp the size of my fist and then drove home with an auntie who might have been 80 and at first I felt a bit sad that she was having to drive for Grab but then after a few minutes I was wondering HOW she got to drive for Grab and WHY she has a 5 star rating.
I lived. (And also gave her a 5 star rating…???)
This week we’ve been floating around doing different things while we wait for our Vietnam visas. Well, mine came in yesterday but Scott is still waiting.
I had a great massage, a facial that came with a massage for $50 and we took a Tuk Tuk food tour! How fun - lots of delicious food, a temple stop and we ended up at the flower market at the end. Streets full of mostly women braiding jasmine flowers by hand and making magnolia posies which will end up as offerings at temples all over Bangkok.
We folded lotus flowers (I’ve been wondering what these were!) and bought a bar of Dubai chocolate to snack on over the next couple of days.
We went to a Temple with a 59 meter gold Buddha only to discover he’s getting a makeover, but the insides of this temple were too beautiful to be disappointed.
We ripped across town one night to see more Muay Thai fights! I’m usually pretty squeamish about fights on tv but something about being in the crowd, the beer, the excited viewers, the coaches and bookies, it really gets the blood pumping! There were 8 fights, we met a huge group of young Brits all travelling together and Scott got on the jumbotron! Go Scott!
It’s Lunar New Year next week so Chinatown (and everywhere) is bumping all the time right now. Lots of beautiful displays and special food and red lanterns all over the place.
We’re trying to take breaks right now through the day indoors as the air quality has decreased significantly. On one of the air quality apps they do a comparison to the number of cigarettes it’s equivalent to smoking. Yikes!
More next week after more markets, maybe more Muay Thai and definitely Chinese new year!
SVP xo