Bangkok, Thailand - Day 2

As we awoke on our second day in Bangkok, the reality of the weather really hit us hard. We were prepared for heat and humidity, but we weren't prepared for quite this level of it. Living in the mid-Atlantic, we're no strangers to hot summers. It's normal for temps to be in the 90s with high humidity. Just about anyone reading this can imagine the summertime (even though it's winter today). Walking outside after you've been in a highly air-conditioned building and the wall of heat hitting you instantly. Your breath catches in your throat for a minute as you struggle to adjust to the thicker air. Your sunglasses steam up from the sudden humidity change. You walk a short ways feeling the sun rays heat your skin. At first, you're still cool enough from just being inside that it doesn't bother you as much in the beginning, but then...then you get to your car that's been sitting out all day. You pull open the car door and an entirely new level of heat slaps you in the face. You pause briefly, but eventually give in and take a seat in the hot box knowing that the sooner you do, the sooner you can blast you a/c in the car. But for a few torturous moments, you sit in that car thinking that hell itself couldn't be much hotter.

Now...imagine going from inside a nice, cool building immediately into that boiling car, and you have just a small idea of the intensity of the weather in the South Pacific. To give you an idea of numbers, the average daily temperature while we were in Bangkok was 96-98, with a heat index of 115. A few days later when we were in Chiang Mai, the temps soared up near 103 with a heat index of 120. It got to the point where it was so bad, we started altering our plans to simply avoid being outside. Remember 2 blogs ago when I was so excited to do during "off season" because hotels were cheaper and crowds were smaller...now I understood why. No one with a sane brain or a true comprehension of this miserable heat would intentionally do this to themselves.

Right, so back to the trip. The first sentence in my journal from the day says, "The heat got the best of me today, and our 2 hottest days are up ahead." What foreshadowing! Haha. We had a lovely breakfast in the executive lounge of the Hilton before setting out to find the shrine to the Goddess Tubtim. I'm not going to say too much more about this except that it's a unique shrine with a handful of phallus statues that's a bit of a challenge to find. We thought it would be funny to see based on the internet photos we saw, but when we finally found it, it looked like much of it had been taken down.

Hopelessly sweaty, we continued on to the Jim Thompson House. This wasn't much cooler (except for a handful of air conditioned gift shops that we lingered in a little too long with no intention of buying anything). I really enjoyed learning about this American man who moved to Thailand and revitalized the Thai silk industry. Tour his home gave you a good idea of the traditional/historic Thai architecture and the lifestyle of someone with a plethora of disposable income.

Gardens of Jim Thompson House

Jim Thompson House - Bangkok, Thailand

After the Jim Thompson House, we cooled off in the Siam Center with some more Japanese food. (2 days in Thailand, and we have yet to actually have Thai food yet.) We then walked around the Siam Paragon shopping center for a little while which contained very expensive, high-end designers. We then headed for the Interchange 21 Citibank building. What a strange building. We easily got lost walking around this place trying to find our escape room.

Let me pause here to talk about escape rooms for a moment. For those of you reading this now, you're thinking, "Escape rooms! Those are fun!" And you would be right. But when did you first go to an escape room? Last year sometime? Maybe...maybe the year before that? Certainly not before 2016. And that's right. Because they didn't exist in the United States until 2016. But my trip to SE Asia was in the spring of 2015. That's right! The Escape Room phenomenon got its start in Asia. We stumbled upon them purely by accident, and thought they were so fun we ended up doing 2-3 more before our trip ended. (Sad side note: we knew during this trip that if these ever came to the United States, they would take off like gang busters! We could have...we should have opened our own and made the big bucks before anyone else did. Double sigh...)

The first one we went to was called Escape Hunt. We needed 2 hints but were still able to solve the mystery in under an hour. What I really liked about the Escape Rooms in Asia was that you could do the room with just two people. They didn't stick random strangers in with you or make you pay for the whole room just to have a private group. We booked the room for 2, and enjoyed it all on our own.

Escape Hunt - Bangkok, Thailand

After the escape room, the temperatures outside kept us from being able to do much of anything. We toyed with the idea of going back to the Grand Palace, but we just couldn't handle the intensity of the humidity. Instead we went back to our hotel. We arrived just in time for afternoon tea/happy hour in the executive lounge which was awesome. They had all sorts of sandwiches, small meat plates, fresh fruit, and cakes. We ended up just eating that for dinner and then spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out how to minimize our time spent outside which proved to be very difficult.

We packed up our things and turned in early because the next day we headed back to the Bangkok airport and headed north to Chiang Mai. What a great two days those ended up being and all thanks to a little bravery, a little luck, and perhaps a little bit of naivety. That place definitely force me to crack my timid shell just a little bit with the help of some tigers and elephants!

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler