Photos from Asia
A bunch of photos from our recent Thailand-Myanmar-Laos trip.
Flight Helsinki-Bangkok. The in-flight entertainment system is a nice concept, but the headphones that they provide (Finnair) take away all the joy, it was very hard to follow the plot of the movies when vocal intelligibility was totally gone because of the distortion. Every frequent flyer should definitely get an adapter (2x male -> 1x female headphone connector) in order to use own headphones.
Bangkok skytrain tracks.
Near the Khao San Road district they had a whole street full of “pro”-audio retailers that were selling all kinds of cheap chinese PA-systems, microphones and stuff. Asian version of Musikhaus Thomann, I guess.
The river boats provide a nice sightseeing tour of Bangkok.
No balloons or duriam allowed.
Banyan Tree Hotel in front. One of the tallest buildings in Bangkok (87 stories high iirc), there’s a restaurant on the roof of the building too.
Lumphini Park. Nice relaxing park right in the busy downtown Bangkok.
They had some interesting bodyweight exercise equipment there. Sadly they were more or less broken, but it would be cool to have this kind of stuff in Finnish parks too.
Despite it being around 38 celsius hot, there was a part of the Lumphini Park where local bodybuilders were training in the bright daylight. Bangkok equivalent to Mayor’s Gym, maybe?
Bangkok by night. I think this was somewhere near the Chinatown.
A common sight in Bangkok. They’re building a lot all the time.
MBK Center, a HUGE shopping mall witth I-dont-remember-how-many-thousand-stores. They had a huge picture of the king of Thailand on the wall, many other places had those too.
A good Thai fine-dining place that was one block from our hotel. We ended up having dinner there on several nights.
On our way to Myanmar.
Gas stations look the same, even in Myanmar.
Mandalay. One of the least pleasant cities I’ve been to. Full of big city chaos and shitty infrastructure, but still not that much to do in terms of nice restaurants, shopping or whatever.
This is what most restaurants are like in Mandalay. I can’t understand why same people rate their atmosphere as “very good” or “excellent” on Tripadvisor.
A pretty dodgy scaffolding. They’re building serious buildings but still they use bamboo sticks. I wonder how many construction workers die or get injured there every year.
7-11 hasn’t still taken over the market in Myanmar, so this is the usual form of retail business over there.
Bus station in Mandalay.
On our way to Bagan we had a lunch break of 30 minutes. The whole trip, that was less than 200 kilometers, took 4,5 hours which tells something about the road conditions.
A view from the roof terrace of our hotel (Thiri Marlar) in Bagan. Astonishing. This is where they served breakfast every morning.
I was delighted to see that they’re building sewers there and not just dumping liquid waste on their backyards.
New Bagan by night.
A vegetarian restaurant in Old Bagan. They had such a tempting service promise that we had to try it out, the owner had even printed out reviews from Tripadvisor and he was showing them to customers. In terms of food and service, they really delivered.
The oldest vegetarian restaurant in Old Bagan right next to the one we visited.
Dogs are a common sight over there. Luckily they’re not aggressive.
Aino climbing on top of a big temple.
Panorama view from the top of that same temple. Whoa!
Local waste handling.
Pitstops were a common sight. There was fresh water in those clay pots (we had our own bottles with us all the time), which WILL come in handy for all farangs.
A local bus depot with three generations of buses. I hope they’re not using the leftmost bus anymore :-|.
The cool thing about having a hard-to-spell lastname is that you get all the receipts and stuff written with your firstname only. Very practical :-)
A cozy restaurant in Nyang-Oo. There were scribblings on the walls by people from all over the world, the food was good also.
Bus station in Nyang-Oo, on our way back to Mandalay and through Bangkok to Laos.
Engine cooling done in Myanmar way.
I’m pretty certain that this truck was a Chinese product based on a Soviet design.
A common sight all over Myanmar. It’s not blood spatter, but spit as a result of chewing some nuts that colors ones teeth and mouth also.
Chaotic traffic in Mandalay.
Frontside of a cinema in Mandalay.
Back in Bangkok. The Thailand banks all have their own ATMs, contrary to Finland where all the banks have a jointly-owned company Automatia and people don’t have to worry about finding their own bank’s ATM in order to avoid extra service fees.
Railway station in Bangkok. Not as modern as I had thought it to be, given the overall level of infrastructure in Bangkok.
Sleeping car of the train. En route to Ubon Ratchathani.
Border crossing Thailand-Laos is hands down the most confusing I’ve ever seen. There are no clear signs anywhere and it all looks just like your average road, but one just has to guess their way to the right building to get a visa and stuff.
Local roadies loading a sound system in a truck.
Visa prices in Laos vary depending on your nationality, for some odd reason Canadians have to pay almost 40% than Swedes. Go figure.
Bus station in Pakse, Laos.
On our way from Pakse to Don Det.
Mekhong river as seen from our hotel restaurant terrace.
Main street in Don Det.
Mekhong river panorama.
Shady business to say the least. They sold pirate content (music, movies, tv seriers, e-books) that they’d transfer to your portable media device. I think the price was very high (music albums priced at $1 a pop) given that they don’t pay royalties to anyone, and all the content is downloaded from P2P networks or something.
Cigarrette stand. There are still countries where you can actually have cigarettes visible in a retail location ;-)
An old railway bridge connecting Don Det to Don Khong.
Don Khong.
Aino figuring out what to do.
Lao-Cambodian border. It wasn’t very clearly marked, though ;-)
A travel agency that instantly seemed “legit” and “reliable”. Take a look at their e-mail address for example.
On our way back to Pakse -> Ubon -> Bangkok. Waiting for the bus in Don Det.
Lao-Thailand border again, equally confusing when entered from the opposite direction.
Some Thai guys were seemingly happy that they had found the way to the exit tunnel leading back to Thailand so they had to take photos of themselves before entering the immigration ;-).
Maybe it’s just me, but this sight was something I instantly associated with “Mexico”.
Patpong district in Bangkok. A lot of people asked us all the time if we’d want to see “a ping-pong show”.
One of the coolest bars EVER.
Local live concert advertising is very different from what we’re used to in Europe. No posters with promo photos of the bands, but simplistic banners.
Energy drinks were widely available in Thailand and they were very cheap. But the difference compared to European ones is that they’re not carbonated at all. I thought that “plain” energy drinks taste too sweet or sugary, but luckily they had different soda waters available (at low prices too) so the problem was easily solved.
A view from our hotel room window. Bangkok is HUGE, there were skyscrapers all over the city. The hotel was nice enough to give us a business suite for the price of a regular double room since they didn’t have any double rooms cleaned when we arrived at 9am. Very good service, so book a room at Bandara Hotel Silom if you’re going to Bangkok.
Weekend market in Chatuchak in Bangkok. Open 6am-6pm on Saturdays and Sundays. It’s HUGE. I heard that there’s around 200000 people there a day.
Döner kebab in Bangkok. I didn’t taste it though.
This is a real lifesaver for all tourists going to the market. No more worrying about excess luggage or having to skip buying something bulky as stuff can be sent home using DHL that had their own drop-off location at the market. Really reasoable prices too.
There was an endless amount of this kind of bazaar alleys at the market, selling everything imaginable and unimaginable
Nice sign.
Aino found a new friend in Bangkok.
Long live the King. Bangkok airport.
I wonder if the same designer has designed the Helsinki-Vantaa airport and all other European airports as they look so similar in many ways.
Like this elevator shaft for example.
It was very cloudy and the clouds were very low in Helsinki. Haven’t seen anything like it on my previous flights.