Joan and I continued our journey through SE Asia with a flight from Taiwan to Bangkok where we rented an apartment for two weeks. I’d learned a lot about Joan since our first trip to Thailand and had made adjustments to encourage future visits. They worked! By the end of our two weeks in Bangkok, she was already talking about returning with me next year.

Bangkok is a massive city with an unlimited number of things to entertain. I’d spent two months the previous year getting to know the city through social gatherings and independent exploring. While I love the neighborhood around the ferry pier at Saphan Taksin, I found that there are more modern facilities around the Chong Nonsi skytrain station.

Chong Nonsi is a major business district in Bangkok surrounded by high rise buildings. Because many expats work in this area, there are plenty of western restaurants and conveniences. My favorite is a French bakery called Brioche from Heaven. They have a pastry that is part croissant and part muffin though it is bigger than both. Joan indulged me by allowing us to eat at a French bakery on our first morning in Thailand. I indulged her by booking a place with a swimming pool.

Our Bangkok apartment was pretty spacious and included air conditioning (my requirement) and a swimming pool (Joan’s requirement). What surprised us with our dated apartment building was the Olympic sized swimming pool on the top floor. In addition, there was a fitness room and a laundry. We only took advantage of the latter, which made a perfect excuse to enjoy the pool while doing a load of laundry.

Like our building, the neighborhood around our hotel was a mix between new and traditional. Every weekday, the alley next to our building came alive with food stalls where local Thai in business suits came to grab an affordable lunch to go. There were also nicer restaurants where both foreigners and Thai locals could have a more comfortable dining experience.

Everywhere in Bangkok, there are shopping malls which provide air conditioned relief from the sweltering Bangkok heat. The shopping malls have many familiar chains like Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut, and at one point, I counted at least 5 Starbucks within 15 minutes walking distance of our apartment. Still, there are plenty of local chains providing food and products we’ve only seen in Thailand.

Being in the expat working district meant other conveniences like the Onsen Japanese spa. This is a spa that imports mineral spring water from Western Thailand. The water is then heated or cooled to provide 9 different soaking pools. At the entrance to each bath, there are instructions on which regimen to follow based on the condition you are trying to recover from.

I find the ice bath to be really helpful in reducing inflammation from my constant walking. There is also a sauna and steam room to help balance the chill of the ice bath. Temperature is not the only difference between pools. They also have pools with various size bubbles from standard Jacuzzi type to bubbles so fine they call it a silk bath. Joan and I both got spa packages that included 90 minute massages and access to the pools for about $45 each!

Another thing I discovered during my previous year’s visit is new markets. I’m convinced that Thai people never cook at home due to the abundance of food available at all times of the day. There are night markets, day markets, weekend markets, train markets, and floating markets.

The latter two are somewhat of a misnomer as there are very few left. “The” train market refers to a market about 2 hours outside of Bangkok where the vendors take advantage of the unregulated space on the railroad track to sell their goods. Since the train is still in operation, however, there are several times of days they must clear their wares from the tracks. They’ve created some innovations to deal with this like retractable awnings that they can pull away from the tracks as the train passes through.

Not far away is one of the last true floating markets. They originally got their name from a time when Bangkok was a city of canals. Farmers would bring produce into town and sell it from their boats. In the town of Amphawa, you can still buy your produce from a boat, but you will find more tourists than Thai there. Today, Thai buy their produce from one of the many floating markets around Bangkok, but the stalls are all built on solid ground. They just retain the “floating” name for posterity.

I took Joan to my favorite weekend floating market, and though we saw a couple token floating vendors, most of the vendors had permanent spots in the lot next to the canal. I tried a variety of things and even Joan found something to enjoy despite any sign of refrigeration of the ingredients. We washed it all down with iced coffees from a beautiful coffee shop next to the market.

We met up with two other friends that week and tried two other markets. Michele joined us to visit the artist house, which is a cafe where you can do crafts while drinking coffee on the side of a canal. We’d met Michele a couple years before in Mexico, and she just happened to be in Bangkok at the same time we were. It’s always fun having a reunion with our travel friends in different countries or on different continents. While we didn’t do any crafts, we enjoyed catching up for a couple hours over coffee.

Two nights later, we met up with Dave, who I befriended last year on a trip to Vietnam. We headed out to ChangChui Creative Park, which is a combination vintage and food market. It is known as the plane market because hovering over the space is a salvaged jet airliner. In addition to providing ambiance, it has a restaurant inside the fuselage for a first class dining experience.

It was great to see Joan enjoying a place I visit regularly, knowing I could now count on her to come with me in the future. We wrapped up our two weeks in Bangkok with one last visit to the French bakery before heading to the beach, another part of my scheme of selling Joan on SE Asia.