Arriving in Southeast Aisa
Since last year when I got bitten by the travelbug I am now addicted to backpacking. After an unbelievable journey through central america in the summer of 2016 I decided to head for the other direction this year: Asia!
To be precise, southeast Asia. My first stop was Bangkok, where I stayed for 5 days. I have to admit I did not like Bangkok - at first. All the noise, people constantly trying to sell you something and the traffic. This was not what I traveled thousands of miles for. After a day of lying in the bed too sweaty and tired to move but also too hot to sleep I finally got up and went on a walk further than the next 7-eleven. There I found what my ears have been craving.
Silence.
I found this beautiful temple complex surrounded by big walls. As soon as you entered the gate all there was to hear was quiet talking and the singing of the monks. It was unbelievable relaxing after the stress of the city. My plan was to spend 5 days in Bangkok and then take a plane to Mandalay in Myanmar (former Burma). So I had some time to kill. When I met a nice psychology teacher in my hostel we decided to team up. Young and stupid as we are we decided to borrow some bikes and ride to the Lumphini Park.
A big park in the middle of Bangkok. Google Maps calculated that it would take about half an hour to get there. We ended up riding for over an hour through the craziest traffic I ever witnessed. I am pretty sure I nearly died about seven times on that single ride but it was great fun! In the end we reached the park and my friend - a basketball freak - played some basketball while I was lying on a bench trying not to die from the heat.
As I already mentioned the park is really big, but still you see people running and working out everywhere! There were so many that I even asked a local, if there was some kind of running event. He told me that every day that many people are running here. I was truly impressed and a little embarrassed thinking how few people one sees running in the parks in my home country.
The next day we took a train to Ayutthaya, which used to be the capital of Thailand several hundred years ago.
The heat was unreal, nevertheless we decided once more to get some bikes.
After visiting several temples both of us had run out of water so we stopped at a 7-eleven and bought some water and food. After half a day in the sun sweating on a bike we got used to the heat, but - as every Thailand traveler knows - every 7-eleven is cooled down to about 20°C by big aircons. The shock was not when going into the store, but when leaving! We stepped out of the doors and the heat hit us in the face like Floyd Mayweather. We hadn't noticed but the temperature had climbed up to 40°C and the humidity was close to 90%. The only time I witnessed such extreme weather was the year before in mexico where I only managed to lie in bed and not move. But now I had to ride a bike. The most unpleasant thing about it was not the sweating, the thirst or the weariness. It was noticing that my body was starting to stop working properly. We had to stop several times on our way to the next temple but the view was worth the drive.
There we laid down on the shady lawn for half an hour and everything was back to normal.
On our way back we also visited a floating market and also saw some elephants on the roadside. Unfortunately my camera gave up at the last temple so I have no pictures of them.
My last day in Bangkok me and my new friend spent - how else - biking! We went for one last suicide mission and rode all the way out to the big busstation because my buddy had to buy some tickets to Cambodia. On the way back we checked out another park.
This one was way different from the Lumphini Park. There were hardly any visitors but hundreds of workers.
The park was beautifully designed and cared for.
Since the weather had not changed since the day before the ride had made us tired so we took a nap on some park benches. I had a wet awakening when a stray dog we had played with earlier licked my face.
This was my furry alarm.
The next day I bid my friend farewell and we both left Bangkok, he on a bus to Cambodia, me on a plane to Myanmar.
Since this is my first post of this kind I would appreciate any feedback.
Am I going into too much detail, or do you want even more?
I hope you like my post. Ill be doing more of this kind so be sure to follow me if you enjoyed this one!
the power of the travel bug as you say. Sounds and looks like an amazing trip. Southeast asia is one of the places that I have on my "next destination" list. Keep going!
Yeah its almost like an addiction. This has only been my second big trip but it was amazing anyway!
really a very good dish and beautiful scenery that can be seen from anywhere
hi @bypaul A good collection of travel photos. Thailand is on my list of future destinations. In this set I liked particularly the photo of the turtle. I have tried many times to capture a good photo of these turtles, but just never in the right light. Perhaps it's the low viewpoint that makes it good.
Hi @tomcarpenter thank you very much. It took me quite some time to figure out how to get a decent picture of the turtles. Whenever they are in the water the pics dont look good at all. I think the trick is the low viewpoint and the fact that its not in the water :)
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STOPCongratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by gnashster from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews/crimsonclad, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
Wow what a great post @bypaul! I am sorry to see that you gained so little traction here, this is really a terrific post and the exact kind of thing I want to see more of on Steemit. It is one thing to post a bunch of pictures and another thing entirely to give the context and relate stories about your experience while taking the pictures - you have added so much value to what was already pretty extraordinary photography! Yes please, this level of detail or even more.
Next time you make a post like this please drop me a link the same day you make the post in the comments of my FREE upvote | follow | resteem service (there is no expiration date to my service) and I will make sure to promote it with some bigger Steemit guns than myself. This is the kind of post that @curie curators are scouring Steemit looking for, and if you had been noticed by the right person this could and should have been a $100+ payout post. I am not kidding you nor blowing hot air up your butt - this is an absolutely terrific post.
My favorite image is the turtle followed closely by the elephant topiary, but really all the photography is fantastic. My favorite story you related was getting woken up by a lick from a stray dog in the park - cute dog as well! I can relate a little to the air-conditioned 7-11s and the shock of walking outside - I grew up in Alaska and went straight from high school there to college in New Orleans (Tulane University), and while it doesn't get that hot in New Orleans, the heat and humidity in comparison to my stomping grounds in Alaska was mind blowing. Every business had ACs cranked up to freezing and it was always such a shock to the system stepping back outside into the swampy air.
Happy to follow and upvote and upvote through MSP as well - well deserved! I would resteem but you are so close to your payout date that it would be a bit of a waste of my resteem, but as noted if you drop me a link to a future post as detailed and awesome as this I will promote the crap out of it!
Much love - Carl
Wow! Thank you so, so much for your reply!
I feel honored that my post inspired you to such a text wall :)
The next post is already finished, I will publish it tomorrow morning and of course drop you a link. Do you have any further advice on what to do to get noticed by @curie you mentioned or some “right persons“?
I do not want to spam my post link in steemit that seems wrong to me, but a little self advertising is okay I think. So if you have some recommendations on who I could contact or what else I could do to get noticed that would be great.
I am mainly asking you this not to gain money, but to have a bigger audience. I really like sharing my stories and pictures and comments like yours are worth more than a hundred bucks to me!
Even more love - Paul
No you are right in your instinct not to spam Steemit with your post link. Honestly it is a bit of a crapshoot if your post will get noticed or not when you are just starting out and don't have many followers.
I am excited you have a new post ready and will keep an eye out for it, but please do drop me the link as soon as you publish. If the new post is as detailed, well written and generally awesome as the last one I am pretty confident I can pass it on to some curator friends of mine and get it some good exposure. I just wish I had seen this first post before the payout period was up, this has to be one of the more undervalued posts I have ever seen on Steemit. Anyway looking forward to reading more and seeing more awesome travel photography!
This post has received a 0.31 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @banjo.
Too bad you didn't like Bangkok that much. I don't consider myself a city fanatic but I definitely enjoyed Bangkok, it is so vibrant. Did you see the Buddha in the tree in Ayutthaya? It was kind of small right haha, not what I expected. Keep on posting!
Sadly I learned about the buddha only after I left Thailand :( Would have loved to see it.
Thanks for the support :)
What a nice long post! and beautiful pictures too! I've also been backpacking around in Central America for 8 months a few years ago.
Surprisingly, seems like you know a lot about Thailand in details. That's impressive! I sure followed!
Totally check some of my posts out if you're still around in BKK or in Thailand. Mostly food posts and they're all delicious! :)
@WAYBEYONDPADTHAI