Feeding the elephants, and a lot of interesting things to see!

It didn't take us long to find two good restaurants that we like here in Ayutthaya. And they're both on the same road as our guest house, so it's really convenient. The first one is a hole in the wall type of place with basic cheap meals and the couple running it are smiling and friendly. They do a stuffed omelet for breakfast that's really nice. 

And the other is a little more upscale, but they have a wide variety of interesting dishes, and still at reasonable prices.

Train from Bangkok to Ayutthaya, Thailand

We had booked the train on the official Thai train website. The website has an English version, and although it's not super user friendly, I had no problem doing it. 

We left the apartment at noon, and made our way back to the pink line monorail, this time with our daypacks and carry on suitcases. With one connection, we arrived at the Krung Thep (Bang Sue) train station around 1:00pm with lots of time for our 2:15pm departure.

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A week in Bangkok is more than enough for us

We had been contacted by an American couple, Lisa and Lance who were asking about our time in the stan countries, and they just happened to be in Bangkok and asked if we wanted to get together. We were planning on heading downtown anyhow, so when they suggested a meeting point in a shopping mall in a downtown area we hadn't been to, we were totally fine with that.

We left the apartment at about 11:10am, and arrived at the big fancy Terminal 21 mall and headed to the 5th floor food court. Lisa had suggested having lunch here. Certainly not the type of place we would normally choose, however there were a lot of local food choices, and with typical street food prices.

Glad we went, but it's a bit run down...

Looking for something off the beaten path here in Bangkok, I came across Ko Kret Island. 

It's only an island because of a canal they dug in the early 1700's to speed up shipping traffic between Bangkok and Ayutthaya. Over time, erosion caused the canal to actually become part of the river, and now Ko Kret is a man made island. 

Thoughts on Thailand so far

We've only been here for four full days, and only in the city of Bangkok... so keeping that in mind, here are our thoughts so far...

Yes, it's hot. Bangkok is one of the hottest cities in the world with a typical daytime high of between 32C to 34C (90F to 93F). Doesn't really matter what time of year, although some seasons get more rain than others. 

We're surviving, because we were mentally prepared for it. But I think we knew even before we came here that it's not a place we could live.

Fun exploring some of downtown Bangkok

On Monday, we relaxed in the apartment until after lunch. Ruth had read of a sound at light show that they do at one of the bridges downtown, and it doesn't start until after dark. We hadn't been to downtown yet, so we figured we would start late and see some of it at night as well.

We headed out at about 2:30pm.

The largest weekend market in the world

Another beautiful day in Bangkok. The skies seemed a little clearer yesterday (Sunday), and still hot with a high of 33C (91F). Seems that's the temperature every day here in Bangkok... the forecast for the week ranges between 32C to 34C (90F to 93F), with occasional clouds, although they are saying there is a chance of showers this afternoon.

Ruth had read about the Chatuchak Weekend Market that looked interesting, and it's located right beside a big park that looked nice to wander around on a Sunday.

First day in Bangkok

We figured we'd take it easy on our first day, but of course in true Kevin and Ruth style, we still walked our feet off! 

First on the agenda was to find a local SIM card for the phone. There are three major cellular networks in Thailand, but the AIS network is supposed to be the best. I did some research, and they have a corporate outlet in the big Fashion Island Shopping Mall which isn't far from our apartment. 

November Expenses... right on target!

When we make up our budget for the following month, it's obviously just a guess. And we are usually above budget because 1), there are so many variables, and 2), we always purposely guess a bit low to give ourselves a goal to keep expenses in line. 

So at the end of October, I posted that "we have a budget of about $2,900 CAD ($2,088 USD) for the month of November"... and we ended up spending exactly $2,922 CAD ($2,165 USD) in total. 

Welcome to Thailand, country #66

Last you heard from us, we were in New Delhi airport waiting for our flight to Bangkok.

That flight went much better than the one from Almaty to New Delhi. We both managed to snooze on and off, and we arrived right on time at 4:10pm despite departing almost a half an hour late from New Delhi. Got through immigration quickly, and then waited for our bags.

That was a LONG day...

Writing this at 8:30am Friday morning local time at New Delhi airport. Yes, it was a LONG day and we're only half way there!

Our flight from Almaty wasn't scheduled to leave until 2:40am.... stupid o'clock. But, that's what you get when you only spend $222 USD ($301 CAD) for the IndiGo Airlines one way flight each from Almaty to Bangkok, connecting in New Delhi.

And, we're off to Bangkok!

Our original plan was to go up to the big Shymbulak Ski Resort yesterday. Not to go skiing, although we would have liked to but it's still too early in the season. We just figured we'd go up and do some more hiking, and just enjoy the views. Apparently the lifts are open, even though there is no skiing yet. 

But we were both feeling a little bit stiff and tired!

A nice day up in the mountains of Kazakhstan

Yesterday morning, we took a taxi up into the mountains. Our goal was to get to Big Almaty Lake, but there was a lot of conflicting information online about whether or not the road was open, and we didn't know how much snow was going to be up there.

When you use the Yandex taxi app, it's very similar to Uber... when a driver is assigned to you, you can see the rating of the driver. This one was fairly low, but I didn't think anything of it at the time.

Not often we splurge on a meal out

There is a big indoor market here in Almaty that is supposed to be quite something. So we walked over there yesterday morning to check it out, and were disappointed to find it was closed. Not sure whether this was a one time thing, or perhaps it's closed every Monday which is entirely possible. Maybe we'll try again on Thursday before we leave.

However, there were some food stalls open, so we decided to take advantage of that. One place was serving the popular local dish plov, and it looked really good.