Friday (1/7) – Lamphu Treehouse (Bangkok):

Yep, it’s official: we are never leaving Thailand. We will claim asylum from culinary persecution in Mongolia. You can’t make us go back! Hm, I guess I should be careful what I saw – you guys might take us seriously. All jokes aside, we are loving our time in Thailand. I know it has only been 2 days and we have only seen a small fraction of a fraction of the country, but we have loved every second.

For dinner, we made our way back to KSR. If possible, the place is even crazier at night, but in a good way. Plus since it’s dinner time, there are even more food carts packed along the street. The smell is mouth-watering.

We considered eating at an Italian joint and we even went so far as to take a table and look through a menu before we looked at each other and said, “What the heck are we doing? Who raves about Italian food in Thailand?”

We ended up at a small Thai place down an alley from all the action. Like everywhere else, the place had a patio for outdoor dining underneath the stars. It was just one of those moments when I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming – there was just so much going on that was too good to be true. One of the main things I can’t believe is that just 4 days ago we were freezing our tootsies off in Olgii, and now here we are sweating our way through Thailand.


For dinner, we settled on pad thai – I know, I know, we are such tourists for continuing to order pad thai. I swear all the waiters all roll their eyes whenever we order this. We did also get an excellent chicken dish with onions, peppers, and cashews. It was a wonderful meal and we have the pictures to prove it.

After stuffing our gobs, we headed back out onto KSR for some dessert. We decided to sample from a street cart serving up Thai pancakes – which are really more like crispy crepes stuff with various fillings. We chose fresh banana and they came drizzled with condensed milk. Delicious!


Fully content, we made the walk back to our hotel with a quick stop at 7/11. Earlier today Ashlee discovered that our hotel has a rooftop patio that seems to be a well-kept secret. The stop at 7/11 was for me to buy a beer to enjoy on the patio. It was an excellent way to end the night.


I’ll say again how happy I am with our hotel. It’s in a great location (right in the heart of Old Bangkok and only a 10-minute walk to KSR), the staff is super friendly, the rooms are comfortable and quiet, and the morning breakfasts are delicious. Even the décor is nice – lots of old wood, which I recognize might now sound very nice, but my rooftop beer has diminished my vocabulary.

I’m also really happy with how our vacation is going overall. The pace seems to be just right and it is equal parts relaxing and adventurous. Thailand, this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful relationship!

PS – I got an email from Brian, our sitemate in Olgii, today. He says that our school break (which was supposed to start the 10th and which is the reason we are on our trip now so I don’t miss too much class) has been postponed to the 28th. Oh, Mongolia. No class for 5 weeks? Sure!