Around Bangkok

We've spent the past few days looking around Bangkok and generally relaxing. I purposely booked us a hotel close to the sky train and metro to make it easy to get around.

One of the evenings we spent in Chinatown which is quite an experience! 

Below are some more random pictures taken around Bangkok.

 

Bangkok has really grown on me, it was nice to spend some quality time here and get away fro mthe tourist area.

 

Chutuchat Weekend Market, Bangkok

Today we visited the biggest market in Bangkok, Chatchak Weekend Market. I went here when I first traveled in 2011 and always wanted to come back because it was huge with loads of cheap stuff.

 

We needed to get the sky-train to the market but arrived too early so we sat in the park and chilled out for a bit.  

 

As previously said, its a huge market with hundreds and hundreds of stalls. It was reasonably quiet in the morning but got busier in the afternoon.

There was lots of food available. One of the local foods is Mango with sticky rice. Below are pictures of an old lady cutting it up for me.

This place felt a lot more tourist friendly than when I came last time. I'm pretty sure there were no signposts in English in 2011 but now it was very much a tourist place.

Trip to Bangkok, Siem Reap and the Angkor Wat Half Marathon

I've just finished my semester so have a week off. Over the past three months or so I've been running with the goal of running the Angkor Wat Half Marathon in early December. This coincides with my week off. I'm happy to report that training has gone well and I plan to run this next Sunday. However, in the week before this we are going to have a trip to Bangkok for 5 nights then traveling by bus to Siem Reap for three more nights where I will complete the run before flying back to Ho Chi Minh City. 

We fly to Bangkok tomorrow for five nights!!

A trip to the coast near Ho Chi Minh City

Yesterday I drove my bike to take a day trip to the coast of Vietnam. I've done this trip once before and its one of the few places you can go outside the city for a day out. It's about a 1.5 hour journey.

To get to the Island before the coast, You have to get a ferry. It's a bit like the chain ferry at Sandbanks in Dorset.

The drive to the coast is okay, its quite quiet and takes about an hour after the ferry. The road is covered with potholes so you can't go very quickly. When you do arrive at the coast is very underwhelming and its been Vietnamised. The beach is polluted and covered in litter.

I didn't swim or play in the sand but did find a nice deckchair to sit in in the shade. The air was fresher than Ho Chi Minh City despite the motorcyclists best efforts to change that. 

Good news is that I have a week off soon and will be going to Bangkok and Siem Reap.

My friends wedding in Ho Chi Minh City

I attended a wedding this past weekend. One of my friends married his Vietnamese girlfriend. Western men marrying Vietnamese girls is very common and a number of my friends, including myself, are now married to Vietnamese girls. Below is a picture of me and my wife with the happy couple. 

 

Halloween at work

A few days ago we celebrated Halloween with out students. We got two hours off teaching to play games and do stuff with them. Students could dress up if they wanted. One of the games involved each of the classes dressing their students up as mummies with toilet role. Below are some pictures of the event.

 

Landmark 81 - New skyscapers in Ho Chi Minh City

Over the past year or so there has been a big skyscraper being build. Its called Landmark 81 and is 461 meters high. This means its taller than the empire state building (443m) and the shard (306m). It has a viewing platform at the top and a shopping center at the bottom but I've not been yet. I took the photos below out the side of a bus recently. 

I'll go and visit soon. It will give me something to blog about.