One day in Bangkok with Nicolas.

May 7, 2012. Written in Bangkok, Thailand.

One day in Bangkok with Nicolas.

Some of you might still remember my adventures in Hong Kong at my French friend Nicolas's apartment. Since then, 4 months have past. Sometimes, it really shocks me when I realize how long I already have been on the road.

That being said, Nicolas came to Thailand for 9 days to go on adventure with me. One of the best things of traveling is making new friends and seeing them again, so I was happy to see him safely arrive at the airport. Except for having become a bit bold (!) , he had not changed much. While catching up on things, we headed to the hostel I had booked for us. This hostel is about the cheapest you can find in Bangkok, but there is a reason for that. The place is located right next to a club that booms loudly until late in the night. Luckily though, Nicolas seemed to be so tired he fell asleep anyway. While writing on my novel, I waited until the same would happen for me, but that took until 5 in the morning.

The next day, we decided to head for northern Thailand in the evening, so there was only one day for him to explore Bangkok. Together, we took the boat for transport to first have a look at Bangkok's vibrant city center. The city is full of huge malls and shops, and can look so advanced that it can almost make you think you are dealing with one of the worlds strongest economic powers.
"Oh my god, Asia is becoming so rich!" Nicolas said.

Then, we took some local buses, and visited temples in the old city center. After 7 months of traveling, I am pretty much "templed out", and to be honest had not visited any of Bangkok's famous places yet, but I was glad to do some of them with Nicolas. One of the temples was build on top of a huge spiral staircase. From the top of this, there was a nice view on the city's skyline. Bangkok is really a huge city, full of skyscrapers. It seems like I had been underestimating Bangkok a little bit. By the way, the city seems to have 6 million inhabitants, which is a tenth of the country's total population.

After having dinner at one of the big malls, we headed to the bus center to take our night bus to Chiang Mai. After all this concrete jungle, it is now time for some real jungle!