MIKE AND JESS' TRAVEL DIARY

After 28 hours of flights and airport time, very little sleep, and questionable airplane food, we arrived in the hectic city of Bangkok. It is a sauna outside. So humid and warm. While driving on the freeways, we noticed a grey haze, as thick as fog covering the city. We are not breathing healthy air here. People drive like they are escaping the city from a nuclear bomb. Motorbikes whiz past fast moving cars and barely squeeze between them, causing me to have minor panic attacks thinking I am going to witness a collision.

Our hotel has gold accents on everything and marble covering the walls and floors, we forgot we are in Bangkok for a moment. We are spoiled with a very posh room, much nicer than what we would be able to afford back home. For Thailand, it is considered very expensive, maybe what we would compare to a Ritz, for less than $150 a night. While it is nice to stay in such a fancy hotel, this isn’t why we came here.

After a much needed shower, we headed out for lunch. Our third for the day as we had already been up for 16 hours and it was only 2 PM here. To ease ourselves into the food here, my Dad recommends a restaurant right down the street from our hotel he has been to for years. On the way, there are people making figurines out of twine, small cars out of beer cans. It reminded me of Venice beach. You will be walking down one block of a street and not notice any smell in particular and your next whiff is stale pee, nothing in particular, open sewage, then the smell of yummy barbequed skewers.

The restaurant was open as they most are and had fans to try and cool down the customers. The menu was a 3-ring binder full of their dishes with pictures. Mike decided to be adventurous and get a fried frog dish (pad ped). I actually tried it! The flavor was out of this world. Fresh bay leaves and whole stalks of green peppercorns littered the dish, which was far from small. They don’t bone the frogs, just chop the whole thing into pieces. My stepmom eats the bones. That is a little too much for Mike and I as it feels like eating egg shells. The frog tastes like chicken and I loved the liver surprisingly! My first time trying liver. And frog. One of the other dishes ordered was Thai papaya salad (som tum), one of the spiciest dishes I have had,  but only ordered medium. It was incredible except that my lips were on fire for 3 hours after it. We also ordered rice noodles with pork, pad ka pow, a ground pork with brown sauce dish, and a seafood salad.