Bangkok, Thailand: Glittering temples, China Town and the world's best pad thai

I’ll be honest - before we arrived in Bangkok, I wasn’t expecting it to be that nice! But when we actually got here, I was really happy to discover how many amazing things there are to do and see here in Thailand's fast-paced, busy capital.

The last time we were in this city, it was only as a quick stop for the night before we flew down to Phuket and Phi Phi. This time around, we had a few days to properly explore some of Bangkok's best bits - from its ornate temples and colourful markets to the busy streets of China Town.

The Grand Palace and Bangkok's most beautiful temples

At the top of our list of things to see in Bangkok was its famous Grand Palace; a famous complex of jewelled buildings which make up the city's most sacred site.

When we finally made it inside (along with a huge crowd of other tourists!), we found giant golden pagodas, gem-studded walls and smiling statues in the palace's Central Court.

Inside the Grand Palace's ornate Central Court

After we'd spent a couple of hours exploring the palace's grounds, we moved on to Wat Pho; a colourful and mosaic-covered temple complex nearby.

Inside Wat Pho

Inside Wat Pho, the gigantic (46km long!) Reclining Buddha was even more impressive - and even bigger - than it had looked in pictures!

The Reclining Buddha inside Wat Pho

After a really nice lunch at The Sixth restaurant and café, we took a little boat across the water to visit the famous riverside temple Wat Arun - and got there just in time to see the sunset behind it.

Wat Arun temple at sunset

Unfortunately, the day before all this, we did fall for the ‘Lucky Buddha’ scam! A man right outside the Grand Palace (who told us he was a monk in training) told us we couldn’t go in because it was a national Buddhist holiday that day, meaning that apparently only Thai people were allowed in. He then had a nearby tuk tuk driver (who he pretended not to know) take us on a stupidly affordable tour of some of Bangkok's smaller attractions before bringing to us to his friend's tailor shop, where we were of course encouraged to spend money on lots of their things. Since then, we’ve known to steer clear of anyone who gets too talkative around touristy landmarks!

Still, the silver lining of being scammed was that the tuk tuk driver ended up dropping us off at Bangkok's famous Golden Mountain Temple, where we got an amazing panoramic view of the city once we'd climbed to the top.

Eating and shopping in Bangkok

We finished off our second day of sightseeing by trying the pad thai from Thipsamai restaurant, which was apparently voted the best pad thai restaurant in the world. Its walls were covered with five star reviews, press clippings and pictures of celebrity visits, but the layout of the restaurant was very simple and humble and the prices were still really cheap.

Afterwards, we went back to our hostel near the busy Khao San road (where every backpacker in Bangkok seems to end up at night) to have some drinks and enjoy the atmosphere.

Bangkok's brightly lit roads on our walk back home

Another place in Bangkok that I loved exploring at night was its busy China Town, which was bright, crowded and full of street vendors selling a mix of Chinese and Thai food.

Unfortunately, neither Ben or I were brave enough to try any of the insects on sticks that were being sold around there! Instead, we had lots of dim sum, sugar cane juice and noodles - which all tasted amazing.

In Bangkok's busy China Town

After we'd done lots of sightseeing in Bangkok, we also had time to get some Christmas shopping done.

We started in the city's enormous Chatuchak Weekend Market (which has over 15,000 stalls inside it!) but also spent ages looking around some of the city’s biggest malls; Iconsiam, MBK and Central World. Inside all of them, there were cinemas, restaurants and literally anything you could be looking to buy - on any kind of budget.

We’ve also booked a trip to Japan (which I'm super excited for) later this month, where it'll probably be freezing cold, so luckily we found some good last-minute Winter clothes deals in Bangkok as well.

We definitely won’t be needing the new coats or jeans for our next destination, though, because we’re currently travelling to Koh Chang island for a few more beachy, sunny days!

Khao Sok, Thailand: Floating lakehouses, cave trekking and a jungle safari

Khao Sok is one of prettiest and most peaceful places we've been in Thailand so far. After staying in some more built-up holiday and party areas down south, it's been really nice to spend the last couple of days surrounded by mountains, lakes and jungles that have been left almost completely untouched.

Spending the night on Cheow Lan lake

After reading a few travel blogs about the best things to see in Khao Sok, Ben and I decided that the thing we most wanted to do was an overnight trip to Cheow Lan lake.

We actually only got round to booking the trip (through a company called Smiley) at midnight on the night before! But six hours later, we were meeting the rest of the group at Smiley's campsite for pancakes before taking a speedboat across Cheow Lan to the lakehouses where we'd be staying that night.

Cheow Lan lake is pretty different from Thailand's other major landmarks down here in that it's actually all manmade! The artificial lake was built in the eighties as a hydroelectric dam to generate electricity for the south of Thailand - but you'd never guess that it's not natural just by looking at it.

With its jungle-covered islands, limestone cliffs and bright turquoise water, Cheow Lan lake actually reminded me a lot of Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. It was beautiful!

Views of Cheow Lan's jungle islands from our boat

When we arrived at the floating lakehouses, we had the whole afternoon free to kayak, swim and chill with the rest of our group.

Swimming in Cheow Lan lake

The floating lakehouses we stayed in were very basic - but I mean that in the best way possible! There weren't any locks on the doors, the windows didn't all close and - other than around the toilet and shower - there were no walls in the bathroom to separate us from the lake and jungle outside. But this made the whole experience amazing because we felt so close to nature the whole night. I loved it!

Our floating accommodation on Cheow Lan lake

Exploring Khao Sok's jungle islands

In the afternoon, we went on a boat safari around some of the lake’s islands. From our boat, we couldn't see any of the tigers and elephants that live deeper inside the jungle, but our guides pointed out loads of rare lizards, monkeys and gibbons that were hanging around in the trees.

Back at the lakehouses, we spent the rest of the evening drinking and chatting with the other backpackers. But the next morning, we still had to be up bright and early to go on a mini trek through one of Khao Sok’s wild jungles.

It was really cool walking through all the tropical trees, streams and bamboo forests, but the real challenge came at the end of the trek when we arrived at Nam Talu cave.

Cave trekking through Nam Talu

This was my first time caving and even though it was a really cool experience it was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be!

Nam Talu was really narrow, cold and dark inside (even with the head torches our guides gave us) and the water inside it came up to our necks - meaning my caving experience mostly just involved a lot of clinging desperately onto the rocks and trying not to fall down!

Luckily, it was only after we'd finished the caving that I found out Nam Talu is home to loads of King Cobra snakes at this time of year!

Afterwards, we all made our way back to the campsite to shower and eat some delicious vegetable curry before getting back on the boat to begin our journey home (if I can use that word to describe our hostel here!)

Sunset on Cheow Lan lake

All in all, Khao Sok isn’t a place I’d even heard of before this week, but it's been one of the highlights of my trip to Thailand so far. It felt like we'd found a bit of a hidden gem in Cheow Lan lake, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes amazing natural scenery and wants to see a quieter side of Thailand (or a less touristy version of Ha Long Bay!)

The only thing I regretted was not exploring the deeper jungle outside of the lake, where you can see elephants and other jungle animals up close in their natural habitat. I'm hoping we’ll be able to do a little more of that later on in Thailand when we make our way up north to Chiang Mai.

Koh Phi Phi, Thailand: Island hopping, snorkelling and picturesque beaches

After an incredible couple of days of sightseeing in Cambodia, I was really excited to start exploring Thailand, where we're planning to stay for at least the next couple of weeks.

Our journey to the beautiful Koh Phi Phi was a long and interesting one, though. We started by taking the overnight bus from Cambodia to Bangkok, where we only stayed for one night. I'll definitely have to go back to Bangkok to see it properly some time in the next couple of weeks because thanks to either food poisoning or a tummy bug (my first time being ill in Asia and fingers crossed the last) I spent my first day in Thailand just lying in bed feeling terrible!

Next, we travelled to Phuket for a couple of days so we could see what it was like before catching the boat to Phi Phi. I'd expected to really love our quick stop in Phuket but unfortunately the area we stayed in (near Patong beach) was seriously suffering from overtourism. I actually didn't like it at all! To be fair, the beach itself was beautiful, but it was also super overcrowded, with the area around it filled with sex workers, tacky bars and litter all over the streets.

Anyway, our long and interesting journey down south ended pretty happily as we took a boat over to the Phi Phi islands and checked into a really nice little tropical beach hut in Ton Sai Bay.

We arrived just in time to see an incredible bright pink sunset over Loh Dalum beach, and when it got dark we headed to a pretty impressive fire-throwing show at one of the island's beach bars.

An amazing sunset on Loh Dalum beach

The next morning, we went back to Loh Dalum to spend a day relaxing in the sun. It was a beautiful beach and we had a great time chilling there, but again we couldn't stop noticing Thailand's big overtourism problem.

Koh Phi Phi didn't feel anywhere near as crowded as Phuket had, but it was still packed with hotels, bars and restaurants exclusively for tourists. After visiting some relatively untouched, uncluttered and beautiful places (like Nusa Penida island in Indonesia) earlier in our trip, it was kind of sad to see such a beautiful natural area become so built up and tourist-centric. Koh Phi Phi's beaches may be paradise, but they're paradise shared with a lot of other people!

The next day, we got up early to go and see the views of Koh Phi Phi from its highest point. We did accidentally go the wrong way, which made the route a lot longer and steeper, but the views at the top definitely made up for the climb!

Koh Phi Phi from its highest point

Island hopping in Koh Phi Phi

After spending some time enjoying the scenery at the viewpoint, we headed back down to the shore to start the boat tour we'd booked the night before. This boat trip turned out to be incredible and was definitely the highlight of our entire stay in Phi Phi!

Our first stop was Monkey Beach, where families of monkeys climbed along the rocks around us - and didn't pay too much attention to all the tourists trying to take photos of them and getting excited when the babies came out to play.

At Monkey Beach

Next, we sailed over to Maya Bay; the beach where the Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach was filmed. Usually, Maya Bay is open to tourists - and we've had friends tell us that it's absolutely incredible there - but on the day we went it was temporarily closed due to overtourism in the area. Apparently, Maya Bay had become such a tourist hotspot that up to 6000 travellers were visiting it every day (!) and were sadly causing major damage to its coral reef.

We did still get to snorkel around the bay - and this was actually the first time I'd ever snorkelled in my life! I'd be lying if I said I was the most adventurous snorkeller in the group, though. I opted out of swimming with the baby sharks that Ben and lots of the others were getting up close with, and when some of our group started saying that the fish were nibbling at them, I just got back on the boat to sunbathe and chat instead!

Maya Bay

Our next stop was on the beautiful Bamboo Island, where our whole group spent a couple of hours swimming, relaxing and soaking up the sun.

Ben in the ocean on Bamboo Island

When we eventually all got back on the boat, our guides took us to watch the sunset over the ocean while some of our group snorkelled and swam around the area.

We've seen some pretty incredible sunsets while we've been in Asia but this one was definitely one of the best!

As soon as it got really dark, a lot of our group got in the water again to watch the plankton glow in the sea at night.

Sadly, when the boat trip ended, so did our stay on Koh Phi Phi. I'm looking forward to moving a little further north for our next stop in Thailand, but I'm really glad we made the islands here our first proper stay in the country.

Despite what I've said about Thailand's overtourism, we really couldn't have asked for a more fun few days in Phi Phi.