Bangkok Dangerous

No, I don't mean the movie (I was told that the film, which starred Nicolas Cage, was not very good). I mean the actuall city where I spent a long weekend last week.

I've been to Bangkok twice before, but on both occasions I never really got to go around. The first time was for work. I was there for four days but it was mostly long days that were capped off with team dinners. The only place I got to visit was MBK (the mall) to do some shopping. The second time I got to visit Bangkok was by chance. I was flying from London (was on holiday there) to Vietnam (straight to a project kick-off) on September 11 2001, the day of the terrorist attack on the US. As I landed in Bangkok to catch my connecting flight to Vietnam, I was told by the ground crew that my boss had called them to tell me that I needed to stay in Bangkok until our company travel ban was lifted. It was lifted early the next day, but that meant I spent one night in Bangkok. Again, not enough time to see anything.

That definitely was not the case last weekend. I met up with my friend Tim, who has been to Bangkok and Thailand so many times already that he was the perfect tour guide. Our time was spent going around the city with Tim showing me the many interesting sites and bringing me to some really good restaurants to have some great food. I had never been in a tuktuk before so we made sure that I get to ride in one.

We also met up with some friends of Tim and even made a few new friends. Some of these new friends we made took us to an extremely cool night spot. Apparently, it was the house of the owners of MBK - they decided to convert part of their house to a hang-out place. The weather was beautiful, which was really good because this hang out place was outdoors. We spent a few hours here just chilling, drinking wine and rum coke and having shisha (strangely enough, it was my first time to try it, despite it being available in so many places in Manila). After that, Tim and I headed to a club to have a few more drinks...

Probably the most interesting photo I took during the trip was right before we hit the club. Talk about your king of the road (and check out the tail light - literally...)

It was really more like a chill weekend than a dangerous one LOL. Bangkok is definitely a very interesting city. I wouldn't mind paying it another visit, although if I had to go to Thailand again, I'd opt for a trip to the islands like Koh Lanta or Koh Samui.