Travel diary: Bangkok, Thailand – Day 1

In May of 2017, I spent a week in Thailand with 8 of my girls to celebrate my 30th birthday. Here’s a recap of day 1…

Our flight left NYC at around 11PM on a Friday. I always choose to travel at night when flying for a long period of time and into a different time zone. This allows me to sleep on the plane and reach my destination ready to explore and discover. Since there is no direct flight from New York to Thailand, we had a layover in Dubai. This was our third Emirates flight so we knew exactly what to expect. The service was impeccable, the food they served on the plane was excellent and the drinks (yes, alcoholic drinks) were unlimited. We landed in Dubai International Airport 13 hours later and as we waited 2 hours and 45 minutes for our connecting flight, we met up with my friend Gracie who was flying from Florida to meet us. We made sure our flights were landing in Dubai around the same time and it worked out perfectly because we got on the same flight to Thailand.

After some walking and exploring in the Dubai airport which feels like a city in and of itself, we flew 6 more hours and arrived in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport. It was 7:35AM Sunday their time which meant 8:35PM Saturday in NY. When I tell you our internal clocks were all the way confused, it’s no understatement.

Recommendation: When you land in Thailand, exchange your money at the airport. This is the first place I’ve traveled to that they didn’t charge a fee to convert your money! So don’t bother doing this in the US. You can also do it at the banks there. They served us this delicious cold drink as we waited to be helped.

Below is a look at our hotel: Viva Garden Serviced Residence. It was beautiful, very clean and the staff was very kind. The only issues we had were: 1) The majority of the hotel staff didn’t speak English so it was a bit difficult when ordering at the restaurant and 2) there was construction being done outside of the hotel. In all honesty, it really didn’t bother me much because no amount of noise can stop me from sleeping and the views were still amazing in the distance. Besides that, I would highly recommend this place.

After getting a little bit of sleep, I decided to lounge by the pool for a bit… We really didn’t plan on doing much that day since we needed to recover from our long day of traveling.

Buy phone case here.

I’m wearing a bathing suit from Victoria Secret & H&M shorts. The sunglasses are from Sassy Jones Boutique.

Later on that night, we asked the hotel’s staff for food recommendations in the area and they suggested we took a walk around the neighborhood. We ended up having dinner at a place nearby.

That sea bass was certainly as delicious as it looks. Everyone seemed to enjoy their meals every single time we ate so not to worry: Thai spices never disappoint.

After leaving the restaurant, we walked around some more and decided to snap some pictures near this Versicolorful wall that showed the word ENERGETIC. That wall is a blogger’s dream… Since we were walking to dinner, I decided to ditch the heels for once and rock studded flats with my Zara bodycon dress and SHEIN duster which you need in your life girlfriend. It’s under $25 so just trust me on this! 🙂 I finished the look with my Charming Charlie head chain.

Thailand is extremely hot man! If you plan on visiting, I recommend bringing light, airy clothes that are comfortable because there’s nothing worse than sweating in clothes that stick to your body.

If you’re a fellow budgetnista, once your flight and hotel are booked, consider your most expensive spendings out of the way. You can seriously feel like royalty in Thailand because the US dollar is worth 35 times the Thai Baht. Yup, you read that right: $1US is about 35 Thai Baht so don’t let money be the reason why you don’t visit such a magnificent place. And as previously mentioned, Thai food is simply amazing and as affordable as it is, you can enjoy seconds without ever worrying about your pockets!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. Stay tuned for a recap of day 2!

Until then, let’s keep exploring, dreaming and discovering the world together 🙂