Full circle

With local girls who took my photo (and wanted to be included)

I'm in Bangkok once again. This is where my trip started and this is where it ends. After six and a half months it's my last day. Tomorrow I'm going home.

All the chaos on the sidewalk: pedestrians, vendors, motorcycles

Yes, I'm excited to be going home. I miss my family. I'm looking forward to not having to live out of my backpack. To have a clean house to come home to.

Colorful traffic

And yes, I'm feeling a little sad that my adventure is over. Today I just wandered around Bangkok, trying to cram as much as I can into my memory. I bought one last freshly squeezed mandarin orange juice from a stall on the sidewalk, munched on one last pineapple and sour mango, ordered one last pad thai and enjoyed a final mango shake for dessert.

Freshly squeezed orange juice and fresh coconuts

Who knows when I might come back to Asia again. And I will definitely be back someday.

Here are a few of today's random scenes from the streets of Bangkok.

Dancing on the streets

There's always a McDonald's nearby

Frying something

Durian

Colorful stalls

Assorted meats

What will it be?

The amazing temples and palaces of Bangkok

Three elephants statue in front of the Grand Palace

I finally got around to checking out the famous temples and palaces in Bangkok. Previously, I associated Bangkok with doing errands, making travel arrangements and shopping so that visiting tourist attractions was never a priority.

Reclining buddha

I'm really glad I went. The temples and palaces are so beautiful! First I visited Wat Pho, home of the giant reclining buddha. It's so huge I couldn't get all of it on one photograph.

Detail on Wat Pho

Inside Wat Pho

Around Wat Pho

Next to Wat Pho is the huge complex of the Grand Palace along with Wat Phra Kaew, home of the famous Emerald Buddha. The buildings are beautifully decorated and there are so many of them, it's breathtaking.

Detail on Wat Phra Kaew

No photography was allowed inside so I couldn't get a photo of the Emerald Buddha. Actually, it's very small and not very impressive compared to all the other statues and adornments all over the palace complex.

Grand palace

Grand palace complex

Detail in the Grand Palace complex

Detail in the Grand Palace complex

Worshipers attaching gold stickers on a statue

First casualty: my Kindle

My family drinking Starbucks coffee in a Bangkok mall

I've been lucky on my travels so far that nothing has been stolen and I haven't lost anything (except items of clothing that didn't come back from the laundry in Cambodia, where it's known that nice clothes often mysteriously become lost). My only real mishap so far was that my Kindle fell off the upper bunk bed in a hostel. Kindle screens are known to be very fragile and of course mine cracked.

Now that my family has returned home after their two week vacation with me, I'm traveling by myself again. When I travel alone, my Kindle is my best friend. I usually read it in restaurants while I'm waiting for my order, I often read it for a while after breakfast when I'm not in a hurry to be somewhere, I read it whenever I'm waiting for something and I read it on long rides or flights.

In addition to books I also use my Kindle to store Lonely Planet guides which are all in digital format so I don't have to lug heavy guidebooks around. And I've discovered that I can copy reservation confirmations in pdf format on the Kindle. It's very easy to just show the Kindle rather than booting up my computer when I'm checking in at a guesthouse or when I want to show an address to a taxi driver.

I can't imagine traveling without my Kindle. I was devastated when it broke.

The good news is that my Kindle broke in Bangkok and not in some godforsaken jungle or undeveloped country. I went to one of the many mega shopping malls in Bangkok and simply bought a new one. Problem solved.

All roads lead to Bangkok

Welcome drink in Bangkok

After four months of traveling, I'm back where I started: in Bangkok. This is where all roads lead in southeast Asia. Bangkok is the travel hub where people come to get visas, make travel arrangements, take flights or trains or buses to their next destinations, and meet their families who come to visit! Yes, my family is here! I'm so happy to see them after four months! They came here on a vacation from the snow back home and we will be traveling together for a while.

Looking at Bangkok four months later, after I have been hardening off in Asia for four months, it's not as daunting as it was the previous time around. I've learned to choose street food and all the animal parts such as intestines or chicken heads that are displayed on many food stalls don't bother me as much any more.

Compared to Phnom Penh, Bangkok's traffic is tame and so easy to navigate. And compared to Kuala Lumpur or Hong Kong, Bangkok quite measures up to the futuristic look and feel with skyscrapers, public transportation in the form of the skytrain and upscale shopping malls, escalators, walkways and pedestrian overpasses. Still, it has all the street stalls and exotic flavors of Asia. Out of all the Asian cities I've visited so far, Bangkok is the one that has it all.

Eat what the locals eat

When I travel I usually don't have a problem eating what the locals eat. But this time I'm seriously struggling with street food. Here are today's top picks:

1. Dried pig's head

2. Crabs

3. Sea creatures

And what did I finally eat? In order to avoid nightmares about giant sea creatures, I went to McDonald's to have a salad. OK, I admit it: I went to McDonald's to have a salad. I know, I should be ashamed for going to a fast food place and not eating local food. At least I hope the lettuce is locally grown.

Bangkok, 23 years later

River boats

This is my second time in Bangkok, after almost 23 years. I don't remember too many details about that previous trip, only a few impressions stand out: the pineapple vendors, the ubiquitous tuk-tuks, the street food, the fresh produce market with heaps of various sorts of chilies, and the awfully polluted air. Naturally, this time around I was curious to find out what has changed since then.

The pineapple vendors are still here! They serve the pineapple chopped up in a plastic bag with a wooden skewer, to be eaten on the go. In this hot climate, it's the perfect lunch, light and juicy and I love it. The vendors have diversified by adding other types of fruits to their selection, including melons, coconuts, pomelos and local fruits for which I have no name. I do recognize apples. They are polished a shiny red and packed in clear plastic gift bags. I can't decide whether they are meant to be eaten or taken to a Snow White production. The price of an apple (that is one apple, not one kilo) is two and a half times the price of a pineapple. Apples seem to be the expensive imported delicacy just like pineapples are imported tropical fruit back home.

The tuk-tuks are gone. Well, most of them. I realize this is good because the air pollution has gone down due to a lack of tuk-tuk exhaust fumes. The occasional tuk-tuk that I see around now doesn't emit anything black like it used to. Public transport now consists of buses, the metro and the sky train as well as the river boat. I took the river boat to get me to the sky train station. The sky train is clean, air conditioned, efficient, and not too crowded. Nice, but to me, Bangkok will never be the same without those crazy tuk-tuk drivers.

Street food

Street food is what travelers eat in Asia. I don't remember exactly how it was 23 years ago, except I ate delicious fried rice from street vendors. Now the vendors display too many animal parts that I wouldn't want to see, much less eat (think chicken feet, intestines, liver pieces in cloudy liquid, seafood with tentacles and so on). I still haven't worked up my courage to order anything from them. I don't know how to explain in Thai that I don't want any of those unmentionables in my fried rice.

But times have changed and now there are huge air conditioned shopping malls with food courts serving Thai food. This is much easier, I can order by pointing to a picture. It's just like a typical fast food experience: the pictures show bright, crisp, fresh food but what they really serve is wilted and soggy. I avoided stalls with too many eyes or claws or tentacles and so far I managed to eat well.

Because I arrived in Bangkok on a weekend, my first destination was the Chatuchak weekend market. On first glance it is just another sprawling Asian market. But on closer inspection, it's very clean and was less crowded than I expected. That's probably because half of the visitors were in the adjoining air conditioned mall. Not one single vendor at the market pressured me to buy anything which is a miracle. In fact, I saw several vendors passing time by watching movies or playing games on their electronic devices, oblivious to the potential shoppers they could harass. I was able to stroll through the market in peace and look at anything that caught my attention without having to worry that someone would run after me insisting that I buy it just because I looked.

Fresh produce market

The fresh produce market was disappointing. There are no more heaps of various sorts of chilies like I remember from my previous visit, it is all packed hygienically in bags. Therefore the intoxicating smells that I associate with a produce market are missing. With the white tiles, it reminds me of a pharmacy rather than a market.

Palace and skyscrapers

If it weren't for the occasional palace with a golden pointed roof or a piece of some animal's interior organs displayed on a food stall, Bangkok is just another modern city, not typical of Asia at all. They even have functioning street lights where cars stop on the red and pedestrians cross on the green.