Our last month in Thailand (part 3: whirlwind SE Asia tour)

When our time in Phuket came to an end, 4 of our friends, Mark, Dave, Ed, and Tracey wanted to stay a little longer and see more of Southeast Asia. We recommended a loop to Singapore, Chiang Mai, and Bangkok taking advantage of cheap off-season rates on the budget airlines Scoot and Nok. Ed and Tracey would head home after Singapore.

Singapore was like a little piece of New York in the middle of Asia. We loved the multi-culturalism, the excellent food, and the perfectly organized metro sysytem. We didn’t like how commercial it was with shopping malls and big brand stores everywhere, and many parts of the city are designed for cars not pedestrians, making walking around frustrating. We had gotten used to jaywalking the chaotic streets of India and Thailand, so this was just too much order all of a sudden! Though it was nice that cars actually stop for pedestrians.

The iconic over-the-top Marina Bay Sands hotel and convention center. That top section has a huge swimming pool and it’s like a small city! Room start around $500USD per night. Someone said it’s the number one photographed hotel in the world, so here’s my addition to that record.

The gardens park has these beautiful tree-like structures that are lit up at night and they have classical music playing and the lights match the music. Thousands of people were laying on the ground watching the show. Despite the heat and humidity, there were almost no bugs! I didn’t see a single mosquito the whole time in Singapore, and we were only bothered by a few no-see-ums in the park.

There’s a walkway through these trees that we walked on with stunning views of the city. As beautiful as it was, I couldn’t help but think how artificial it all actually was. Much of this area was all landfill and used to be ocean, so this part of the city was all pre-planned, every detail thought out. After being in other parts of Asia where cities grow up totally organically and merge with nature around it, it felt to me a bit pompous of humankind to try to compete with nature’s beauty.

People preparing for the evening light show.

Our tiny hotel room had a stunning view of the city directly from the toilet. A bit risque for a country where it’s illegal to be naked, even in the privacy of your own home!

We visited a fantastic toy museum where I found toys from my youth.

And from my parents’ generation.

Lots of amazing collectibles.

Asia is obsessed with durians! We tried it twice, and it’s not a taste I enjoy.

One of the great things about Singapore are the so-called hawker stalls. Very similar to the food markets of Thailand, but so much more organized and permanent, even with health and safety inspections! One favorite was this aisle in Little India, which brought us back to our time there. We enjoyed a Chettinadu biryani and even ate with our hand as we did in India and as the local Indians around us were doing.

Classic Singaporean food! Being an English-speaking country, it’s much easier to be adventurous with food because you can read the menu. The carrot cake is not at all what you’d think of; it has no carrots and is not a sweet cake! Tasty though.

We enjoyed views from the Singapore Flyer, the famous ferris wheel.

We stumbled on some kind of odd photo shoot at the botanical gardens.

Beautiful entrance to an underground mall.

A local friend of Tracey’s took us to a favorite Singapore restaurant, and everything was delicious including this creatively presented egg-wrapped fried rice.

Everyone said you have to try the crab! So we indulged on our last night with one chili crab and one black pepper crab. Mark got one also! They weren’t cheap, and it’s messy, but it was absolutely the best crab I’ve ever eaten.

Famous seafood restaurant.

Next up on our tour: back to Chiang Mai!! We were very excited to show Mark and Dave our favorite city in Thailand, but also very tired from all the activities, so we enjoyed a few down days as well as a few more adventures.

We were able to get a short term rental in our same apartment building where we stayed for two months, with the beautiful view of Doi Suthep.

We hiked up the Monk’s Trail from Chiang Mai University to Doi Suthep, a 3km hike up 600m. Sweaty and tricky but absolutely gorgeous.

Tricky footing in places but I can confirm it’s doable in sandals!

Halfway up is this hidden temple Wat Pha Lat, which honestly I enjoyed more than the very busy temple at the peak of Doi Suthep.

It wasn’t exactly Dave’s birthday (one week early), but we gave him some birthday love at an excellent burger restaurant, Rock Me Burger in the Nimman neighborhood.

After the Saturday night market (our favorite in Chiang Mai that was crazy busy this night), we stumbled into the spectacular silver temple, with free entry for the evening! It was really very unique and we were happy to see it.

Steve struck up a conversation with this German traveller at a pad Thai and burrito stand, and it turns out he’d never seen a drag show, so we invited him to join us to the solid performance at Ram Bar that happens every night. He enjoyed it, and we met up for swimming and dinner afterwards on our trip. These fun chance encounters and new friendships are the highlight of traveling for us!

My Thai language teacher also does khao soi cooking classes, so we helped her prepare a big pot of the delicious noodle soup.

Making curry paste is a lot of work on the mortar and pestle.

Drumsticks are the classic meat added into the creamy coconut and chicken stock broth.

Lots of garlic picked from the garden. It was fascinating to see life at her small family farm in a Thai village.

The end result! So good!

Next up, Bangkok! At this point, we were all a bit tired of sightseeing, so we spent our time relaxing, exploring, and checking out the local bars and nightclubs, famous throughout Thailand.

We learned about different types of massage…

One night we spent at a canal-side hotel in Amphowe, home of one of the Bangkok area’s floating markets. Amphowe is still very local and sees far fewer westerners and none of the scams and poor quality seen at some of the other floating markets that many people hear more about. However, we messed up and showed up on a day it was closed. Oops! It was still quite a nice time relaxing away from the craziness of Bangkok. We took a longtail boat tour of the local canals to see the fireflies, which was a lovely and very chill experience.

Highly recommend this hotel on the canal! The dinner they prepared was spectacular, some of the best curry we’ve ever had. They made it properly spicy for us, sorry to Dave; it was a bit too much for him, but they can make it mild if you want.

The culinary highlight of our time in Bangkok was dinner at Ran Jay Fai. She is the only Michelin star street food vendor, and we had made a reservation over a month in advance!

Her famous crab omelet is as big as your two fists. We split it between three of us.

Really nice sauteed vegetables.

Pad kee mow noodles with huge prawns and squid. I’ve been dreaming of this since I saw a TV show about it, and it did not disappoint.

The surprise dish was this yellow curry with prawns and egg. We hadn’t heard anyone talk about this in the reviews, but it was my favorite dish.

The famous chef, Jay Fai, with her signature goggles protecting her eyes from the wood fire flames she cooks over for 8+ hours every day.

After dinner, we said good bye to Mark and Dave, as they prepared for an early flight home the next morning. It was such a delight to spend so much quality time with our friends. We miss you already!

Back in Phuket, we had a lot of bike-related chores, what with our cracked frames. The bike shop helped us strip all the components off the frame, and we spent half a day carefully packing the components into a box, to be sent back to our bike shop in San Diego to be rebuilt. The wheels were too expensive to ship by air, so they are on the slow boat from Thailand, which takes 1-3 months! So we will buy new bicycles in Budapest to keep cycling while these bikes get shipped and rebuilt in San Diego.

It was a sad day and a weird feeling holding our naked bike frames after spending so much time with them, 19 countries, 15 months, and nearly 20,000km.

What’s next for us? Stay tuned for the next blog post, where I’ll include our final thoughts after nearly 6 months in Thailand and where we are headed next!

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