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A very festive farewell to Bangkok

The next morning, we get to wake up late since the bus doesn’t depart from Pattaya until 10 a.m., but after a long week of early mornings, there is no amount of enough sleep and even waking up at 9 a.m. feels too early. After a big breakfast, we board the bus and head back to Bangkok, where everyone is excited for a big night out on Khao San Road again before our free and final day in the city.

After we arrive in Bangkok that afternoon, our group of eight gets together and we split up in cabs and head to Khao San Road. Since it’s early when we get there, only around 8 p.m. or so, the bars aren’t in full swing yet so we spend our time cruising the food stands, buying cheap tourist souvenirs, eating bugs  of every variety as well as scorpion on a stick.

Our tour group friends. (Courtesy of Natalie Hecker)

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Smut and sun in Pattaya

The next day, we wake up bright and early to load onto a rickety speed boat from our hotel, Long Beach Garden Hotel and Spa, to Coral Island, a small island that takes about 20 minutes to get to by boat. Mike and I sit on the ledge on the back on the boat to catch some wind and we get drenched by the waves long before we ever hit Coral Island.

Ken, our other tour guide, tells us in his broken English and an elephant camp t-shirt that the island gets very busy with tourists around 10 or 11 a.m., which was why we he had us wake up early to get on the boat by 7:30 a.m. After a few hours sitting on the seemingly abandoned, quiet beach, we see that he is right – more and more boats are being docked nearby and the once-silent beach is filling up. Still, we’re glad we got the morning alone before lunchtime, when Ken calls all of us over for a meal of whole fish, prawns, mussels and fried shellfish.

Mike and I on Coral Island. (Photo courtesy of Natalie Hecker)

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Getting acquainted with Pattaya, the city of debauchery

Finally, we are almost in Pattaya, the beach destination of the trip. Everyone is exhausted and sick of temples and ready to sit on a beach and explore the city, which is known for its debauchery, drinking and commercial sex trade that overtakes the entire place.

Before we check into the hotel, though, we stop at Gems Gallery Pattaya, the world’s biggest jewelry store, which everyone is not only disinterested in but wholly against visiting. After lunch, where we chug some Changs, this riot only grows with many of the guys planning on taking a cab to the nearby hotel as soon as we get to the gem factory.

Somehow though, this plan disintegrates and everyone is convinced to at least walk into the gem factory once we find out we only have to stay for 45 minutes. Once inside, we relish in the air conditioning and our lunchtime buzzes and we walk through to see Thai people in booths creating jewelry, which is pretty cool, and very quickly make our way to the buying section. We don’t stay in there too long once we see the prices – most pieces are well over $500 and even we are not drunk enough to casually buy a piece of jewelry for he nothing. After drinking another Chang, we get back on the bus well before the 45-minute mark and wait for everyone else to hop on.

Natalie and G.R. got engaged when we got to Pattaya. (Photo Courtesy of Natalie Hecker)

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A step back in time to ancient Ayutthaya

Although our very jungle-esque hotel Felix River Kwai Resort is beautiful on the outside, I’m happy to leave the next morning and escape from the ants and mosquitoes that fill the room after a long sleep following our day on the backs of elephants and bamboo rafts. Centara Grand, our five-star resort that we stayed at in Bangkok equipped with beautiful meals, a poll and waterfall shower, seems very far away.

The grounds at Bang Pa In Palace. (Photo by Jenna Intersimone)

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Just a typical Thai day with noodles, elephants and River Kwai

After embarking for Ayutthaya the next day after waking up at 5 a.m., we head to the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, a colorful market of produce, small meals, tourist junk and more sold by vendors on small boats docked alongside canals.

After we wander alongside the docks, taking pictures with cobras and slow-moving lorises and picking up some Thai tourist garb and seasonings, we pick up some things to eat, including noodles recommended by Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods himself.

A noodle dish from the floating market. This costs less than $1. (Photo by Jenna Intersimone)

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From the gold of the Grand Palace to the grime of Chinatown

I’m feeling pretty tired still today – now equipped with a hangover too thanks to our stint on Khao San Road last night – but Mike and I have booked the Landmarks of Bangkok and boat ride tour along the River of the King and I’m feeling a bit more at home in this city of complete pandemonium.

We head to the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew first, which is full of head-to-toe gold buildings and temples, adorned with diamonds, intricate murals and Buddhas. Most entering Thai visitors – our guide, P.A., included – are wearing black even in the sweltering heat as they are mourning the king, who died a few months ago.

The Grand Palace. (Photo by Jenna Intersimone)

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Tuk-tuks, temples and tours in Thailand

Following an hour drive to the airport, a 13-hour flight to Beijing, a four-hour layover plus a two-hour delay, a four-hour flight plus an additional two to three hours going through customs, finding our Affordable Asia pickup and driving to our Bangkok hotel, we had a two-hour sleep before waking up and hopping on the tour bus for a full morning and afternoon of touring.

Despite my delirium as we toured the Temple of Golden Buddha and the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, otherwise known as Wat Pho which is home to the world’s largest Buddha which measures 10-feet high, weighs over five tons and is worth an estimated $14 million, I realized as we walked around how accessible this trip really was.

Temple of the Golden Buddha. (Photo by Jenna Intersimone)

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Bangkok, a city of contradictions

Most cities, like people, have a distinct, characterizing personality that can be summed up in short, among from their several other outlying characteristics. Florence is an ancient, romantic city flooding with culture, the arts, history and luxury. New Orleans is a carefree, jolly city of free-flowing drinks, food and hospitality. San Juan is a colorful, sunny city made for those both looking for a big meal and big spending.

When my boyfriend Mike and I booked a 11-day trip to Thailand via Affordable Asia that included trips to Bangkok, Ayutthaya and Pattaya, I immediately got to work doing research on our various destinations, pouring over blogs, guidebooks and the few firsthand accounts I could find. However, I very quickly found myself running in circles. Information was few and far between and through all of the pieces that I read, I couldn’t define a clear picture of what it would look like in my head.

The streets of Bangkok. (Photo by Jenna Intersimone)

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My 5 top international eateries in Central Jersey

When people ask me what I do for a living, I’m always pretty psyched to tell them that I write about local travel and food in my Tuesday column and our Wednesday Table section.

Immediately, they usually have quite a few questions.

“How do you find restaurants to review?”

“What if a restaurant turns out to be bad?”

Every time, I launch into my usual speech — I don’t review anything. I only write about restaurants that I like in the first place, but as a journalist, I was trained that no one cares about your opinion. So in my food/restaurant stories, which often sneak into my travel column as well as my Table stories, I never critique the restaurant.

Pork barbeque combo by chef Homer Reyes at La Parilla de Manila, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2015, in Colonia, NJ. (Photo: Jason Towlen/Staff Photographer)
Pork barbeque combo by chef Homer Reyes at La Parilla de Manila, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2015, in Colonia, NJ.
(Photo: Jason Towlen/Staff Photographer)

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An Asian food fan finds underground paradise in Jersey City

Today, I’m an ever-hungry Jersey food writer for this blog as well as Gannett New Jersey’s MyCentralJersey.com and DailyRecord.com, which congregate from the Courier News, Home News Tribune and Daily Record. But as a kid, I was labeled as a picky eater.

Today, I also know better. I was never a picky eater – I was a selective eater.

I crinkled my nose at bologna sandwiches at lunchtime and my mother’s dinnertime microwave meals. I passed on frozen pizza and plastic-looking macaroni. I wasn’t interested in questionable buffet items or soggy french fries.

However, I was definitely down to try colorful sushi rolls, exotic meats and other eloquently prepared dishes that I had never seen in a school cafeteria or even in my own fridge. I’m still the same way today – I gravitate towards something a little stylish, a little fashionable or a little odd over a burger any day, most of which I’m totally incapable of cooking or creating myself.

Many of these dishes that I love the most tend to be of Asian influence – I could eat Thai, Filipino, Japanese and Chinese cuisine every day of the week. However, there are two outstanding issues with this – one, I frequently don’t really know what I’m ordering and two, I’m often dropping quite a chunk of change at fancy restaurants.

Cellar 335 is an Asian fusion restaurant. (Photo by Jenna Intersimone)
Cellar 335 is an Asian fusion restaurant. (Photo by Jenna Intersimone)

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