Thailand floating market

Beautiful People and Lots of Smiles in Bangkok, Thailand

I have heard different numbers on how many people live in Bangkok, between 11 to 16 million people, the entire country of the Netherlands fits in Bangkok, LOL. The Thai people don’t usually call it Bangkok, they call it Krung Thep.

We find the people in this city to be super friendly, polite and helpful.  When we approached anyone, they would stop and try to understand our question; it is refreshing. Even when I approached a monk, he took the time to help me.

In this blog, I want to take a minute to say thank you to a beautiful young lady who took us around the city and gave us first-hand experiences. We spent an entire Saturday with her as she showed us different parts of her city and shared with us interesting culture facts. Thank you, khob khun ka, Cece.  We met Cece at a Mundo Lingo language meet up group, where she offered to take us around.  This young lady is bright, smart and has the most beautiful smile. Our first stop was Chatuchack Weekend Market, an indoor and outdoor market, also known as JJ Market. A huge market with more than 10,000 shops and stalls offering a wide range of products from Thai handicrafts, handmade products, clothing, accessories, arts and painting, house decorations, households, souvenirs and gifts, pets, plants and book. We, of course, did not buy anything since we have a 60-litter duffle bag with us to travel the world this year, no room for tchotchkes. Heaven for this shopaholic!!

She showed us so many places. In this blog I’m focusing on two stops we made.  We ended our day in Lumpini Park, known as the green lung of Bangkok. It is a great place to take a break from the city’s bustle and relax for a few minutes. Thai people come here at the end of their workday to jog, cycle, do aerobics, Tai chi, and yoga, to mention a few. In this park, they have regular jazz and classical concerts. Sadly, we did not experience this personally.  If you like to read, it is a great place to find peace and quiet from the busy city. You can bring a blanket and enjoy a picnic with street food, you picked up along the way.  The park has a couple of small lakes and Cece took us on a swan ride, a total blast. Thank you. Khob khun ka, Cece.

That is not all Cece did for us, she also provided us with a dialogue about here culture and herself, we hope you enjoy the video.

One thing I can say about this city I never felt like I was in danger in any way.  It is a safe city to visit and walk around. Even though most people are wonderful, and it is a safe city, you must be aware of the scam artists. No city is perfect, not even Bangkok.

Many scam artists do not work alone, and they work as a team. Here is what happened to us, our taxi driver took us to a floating market, when I asked him how much it cost, he said he did not know.  He also pretended to speak very little English; later on the way back, he had no issue speaking English with us. As we drove, I believed he listened to us and when we arrived at the market, he took us to a specific person.  We did not notice this when it happened; the person proceeded to try to sell us tickets for 5, 000 bahts for a 3-hour boat ride, I thought I was so smart to have talked her down to 2,500 baht for the ride. Well, it turned out that the ride should have only cost us 770 bahts, so I was the fool.  Later we found out by some friends we made that they work together as a team to scam the tourist by the type of technique.  So be aware of taxi drivers and tuk-tuk drivers.  But don’t let that deter you from coming to Bangkok, it is a beautiful city with beautiful people.

Explore the LingoHut blog

Read the latest