May14
From Bangkok we headed up north for something more than an hour and arrived to Ayuthaya, one of the former capitals of the ancient Thai Kingdom. The city itself has not much to offer, although some good guesthouses, bars and street markets together with the rests of the old city (not many in quality but widespread) make it a “must” for people staying in Bangkok. We spent one and a half days there and it was our first contact with old Thai architecture, Thai rented bicycles and Thai rainy weather. Yes, it rained quite a lot. So much that we think now that the monsoon season, which should start in Thailand by the end of May or the beginning of June, has gone ahead this year. F**ck!!
From here we took another train to Phitsanulok (this time a six hours journey), surrounded by Thai families with kids and babies, by monks and by army rangers, again in a 3rd class carriage. This is the best way to travel around in a foreign country and we really love it, although it is not as comfortable as a VIP bus service… Once in Phitsanulok we spent the first moments wandering around a street market and trying different delikatessen from the food stalls before leaving our backpacks in the most beautiful guest house we found, the London Hotel, and walking along the river to the night market and the food market again.
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May8
Bangkok has been a good surprise for us: it is clean, well organaised and much less noisy than we had expected. It is a very crowded city but everybody seems to be in his given place and we never felt overwhelming as in another cities, such as Delhi or Mumbai in India. We had the impression that Thailand is going to be much easier to travel than India or Nepal, although we really like challenges…
We found a cheap place to stay in Soi Rambutri, a most likely backpackers zone around Kao San Road, where many guest houses, shops and restaurants fulfill the needs of all the independent travellers arriving in Thailand through Bangkok. One can find everything around these two streets: from small food stalls selling fresh Thai food to westener style bars to party and dance.
But this was not what we were looking for in our trip, so we caught some public buses (non air-co, to come closer to the Thais) and explored some parts of the city which are kind of hidden to the tourist. Once again we got surprised as many of these “hidden streets” looked the ones in “touristy Bangkok” alike, I mean, we couldn’t get as deep into local Thailand’s as we wanted to. Is this, what we are looking for, non existing? We will have to wait until the next time we will come back to Bangkok to make sure of it, since we left the city after some 4 or 5 days of getting acclimatized (and this is real, we came from a pleasant temperature average of 25 ºC and arrived at over 35 ºC and a very high humidity in the ambience) and started our way up to the north of the country on the cheapest public transport in Thailand: 3rd class sitting train.
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Bangkok, the capital of the Kingdom
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May6
After a one month visit to our roots, our family, our friends and our traditions, we come back to the new, to the unknown, to the surprising things that a trip to south east Asia has to offer.
The best and cheapest option we have found to fly back from Spain to south east Asia is from Mallorca to Bangkok, Thailand. We have taken advantage of having friends in many places and have stayed at Niko’s place in Palma de Mallorca. Niko is a real Berliner, one of those you don’t find easily in Berlin and who I (Hector) met during the almost 4 years that I was living in Germany. He showed us the city and took us to some nice places and parties in the 2 days we spent there and it was really good fun!!
Now we are in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, and fun has just started now. It’s nicer, cleaner and less noisy and polluted than we thought and we are very curious about this culture. Besides, Thai people seem to be very friendly. So, it seems we are gonna have a good time here!! Our unique big problem right now… we are in the hot season, which means temperatures around 36-38ºC during the day and with a big humidity. This seems a sauna!!! Hopefully we will get used soon…
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Abr29
Well guys, one month is almost over since we arrived back in Valencia and it is time to arrange things for our next trip. On the mean time we have met our families (specially the new member of Hector’s family, his nephew Nico, this beautiful baby you can see on the picture below),
we have partied with friends and spent our hangovers in the beach, in the mountains and in the sofa… We have done exactly everything we had been missing during our trip in India and Nepal and now we feel strong again. Our batteries are fully charged and there are many places and experiencies waiting for us. So, let’s go! Our backpack is almost empty but ready and we can hear the call from Thailand telling us “come to me… come…”.
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Abr22
One of the things we have missed (don’t read missed, it was more like “i know it and I like it, so I would like to have it sometime soon…”) during our trip in India and Nepal was the spanish food, among everything “tapas”. Our fantasy flew many times without any control while sitting in Indian dhabas or restaurants before we could realise we were just dreaming about having “patatas bravas”, “escalibada” or any of these delicacies served in every “tapas” bar. So, back in Spain we did not wait much time to go to one of our preferred tapas bars in Valencia, El Pilar or La Casa de las Clochinas as it is known in El Carmen district of Valencia. Although our city is not the best place in Spain for having “tapas”, this is something one can never miss when coming for a visit in Valencia. Ask at the hostel or surf the internet to find the address of this bar, the food is really good there!!
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Abr18
Party is not the only thing to do while being in Valencia. About 70 km inland, in the Castellon region, there is a very well know town for its surroundings, its turquoise waters (at 25° C all year round!!) and the large amount of climbing options. The town is called Montanejos. Julia and me could not miss a visit to this wonderful place once being in Valencia. You can find everything what you need for your holidays there: a very cheap “albergue” (hostel), really good food, internet, bars and a complete range of activities such as adventure sports, cycling, trekking…
The amount of trekking routes in Montanejos is unknown to us although we already know the zone quite well. There are so many paths and so beautiful views… Without any doubt, one of the places we like more around Valencia. If you are visiting our city and feel like you need some tranquillity, don’t think further, go to Montanejos.
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Abr14
Las Fallas is the biggest and most crowded festival in Valencia happening once a year in March. For 5 days (15th to 19th of March) the streets are closed to the traffic and huge and ironic cardboard monuments are put on them acting as a critic of that what, during the rest of the year, happens in the city or country. Those monuments will be burned away on the last night, as an end of the festival. Some people wear the folkloric dresses of the region and everybody parties, everybody drinks, everybody sings… And many people have fun using firecrackers. Fallas is the festival of fire, the right excuse to be loud and make things which are not allowed the rest of the year. A very big party with music, fire, alcohol and millions of people in the street.
Fallas is a festival to try once at least and, if you really happen to like it, come back again and again every year. Highly recommendable.
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Abr7
6 months were almost over and some good news arrived from Spain. Mi sister, 3 years older than me, gave recently birth to a handsome and friendly boy named Nico. This is the right moment, we thought, to come back shortly to Spain and have a holiday from our holidays or, in another words, rest a bit from so many months travelling. It is not that we were sick of travelling but we have missed some things that you only have when you are settled in a place, like the same bed everyday, like all our clothes stored in the same place and not in the backpack…
Well, don’t be afraid, this is going to be short. The plan is to arrive to Spain, meet family, friends and colleagues and, calmly, look for the most convenient flight back to Asia, this time to Thailand and continue our trip as nothing had happened.
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Abr4
The southernmost point of the Indian Subcontinent is an apparently small fisherman town, which actually spreads out very wide in a big piece of land where the Indian Ocean meets the Arabian Sea. It is also a place of pilgrimage for Hindus, which makes from this town an interesting place to stop over and rest for a couple of days, visit the temple and join the morning and evening puja (prays and offerings in Hindu religion) in the beach.
It is here where we met Andrea, an Italian guy who lives in London and who was able to give us a very good introduction into what meditation means . He also recommended us one place in Gokarna (one of our next moves in India) to learn more about its theory and praxis, which we will definitely check out once we are there. It is a shame that we are not able to rewrite on this travel blog all the information he gave to us.
Our expectations (made out from the guide book that we and almost every traveller carries with him) of finding an “end of the world feeling” on this town disappeared soon. Cape Comorin, although being the tip of the country, is not as pointed as it looks like in the map and the views here are nothing special.
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Abr2
Munnar is another one of India’s long list of hill stations, this one lying in between square kilometres of emerald green tea plantations that satisfy the needs of many of the tea lovers/drinkers around the world. The town is also know for its spice plantations, and the aroma of all those spices spreads in the wind coming out from the high number of shops in every street.
Once again, bad timing to come to a hill station. We had not realise that it was Friday again, which means that many people escape from the hot city and move to any of the fresh hill stations, and there were two different bunk holidays happening at the beginning of the next week, so hotels were almost fully booked, streets pretty full and silence and tranquillity, what we were hunting, were totally absent.
In any case, we enjoyed every minute hiking through the tea bushes and met some of the always smile local people, among them some of the all female crew in one of the huge plantations.
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