Although the traffic’s gotten even more horrendous and the prices are not like they used to be, my favorite hotel view from any city never changes and the Chao Phraya River looks as beautiful as ever from the 30th floor. Here to escape Hari Raya’s annual crowd surge in Penang, we’re spending eight days hitting the city we first visited in 2009 when my job was secure, the economy was just beginning to tank and our first glance of Thailand made us realize we’d be back here some day. Given the annoyances of posting on an IPad, I’ll hold off on daily stories and post a few pictures of the things we’ve done so far. Radically different from Chiang Mai, we’d still never live here but Bangkok remains an awesome sprawling city with a unique combination of old and new (although the old is fading fast) and even in rainy season, it’s always worth visiting. Since we did all the must-do tourist stuff back in our pathetic three-week American vacation working days, we focused on secondary attractions and started off with a journey down Yaoawrat Road.

Possibly the biggest and best Chinatown anywhere, we also ventured into a sparsely visited but excellent museum known as The Chinese Heritage Center.

Sticking to street food, I found an amazing bowl of fish maw soup. As one of the most Asian white boys around, I’m not even sure why I like Chinese food so much but if that’s your thing, Bangkok is the place for you with an enormous Thai Chinese community that enjoys one of the most symbiotic relationships between China and another nation anywhere on the planet.

Although the rain pounded down for hours the first day we arrived, we booked a trip to Khao Yai National Park and lucked out with a perfectly overcast and comfortable day and the rain held out until the late afternoon. As Thailand’s first national park, it’s a long two  and a half hour day trip from Bangkok but it’s well worth it. Maintaining well signed and beautiful national parks, Thailand does nature very well and I look forward to seeing many more in the future.

Having recently watched lots of travel documentaries featuring cooking in Southeast Asia, we wanted to visit Thailand’s largest wet market to see what it feels like in person and Khlong Toei Market didn’t disappoint. Ten square blocks long and totally off the main tourist track, it’s one of the world’s most amazing markets with so many stalls, vendors and people it’s staggering.

Taking notes while watching those TV shows, we splurged at Samboon, one of Bangkok’s busiest and most amazing seafood restaurants where we ordered curry duck, mantis prawns and oysters in stir fry sauce

And last night we ventured out to the new boxing stadium for some live Muay Thai. Lumpinee Stadium is a new and very modern comfortable arena up there with any western stadium and although the ringside seats where they make foreigners sit are not cheap, the excitement and noise level is highly contagious. Watching the Thais using the cheaper balcony seats to engage in never ending rounds of strange betting by screaming and waving fingers, you understand quickly why they don’t let foreigner’s sit up there. But you also get to take pictures with the winner of each round making for a very enjoyable evening.

With three more days to go until we return, I’ll cut it off here because it’s time to hit the breakfast buffet before throngs of never ending visitors overwhelm the way too small restaurant of the Chatrium Riverside Hotel. Today we plan on visiting the Bank of Thailand Museum, another little known gem that becomes a pain in the ass to reserve except on Saturdays when they let people walk in without advance notice. After that it’s a revisit of Khao San Road to see how the backpacker neighborhood’s changed into a trendy version of Asian SoHo (or so says the guidebooks anyway). Please check back next week when I’ll detail each day with in-depth and post lots of great pictures.

Cheers from cloudy and wet Bangkok.