Recently, I'm loaded with tight dateline on my office works, which leads to lack of update in my blog. Ya I know, I've not been updating this blog for a week, and I feel quite uncomfortable as well. But no choice, after going back home at night 10pm, I don't feel like switching on my PC anymore.
Luckily I had a recent quick recharge from 3-day vacation at Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand. With the free AirAsia flight tickets that I've secured early this year, I went to Bangkok with my family (mum, younger brother, gf) from 7th to 9th Apr.
Security Issues?Before my trip, I've been frequently thrown with the same old concerns - Bangkok is dangerous; Bangkok is threaten with bomb blast; Bangkok is threaten with unstable political state. These concerns have been surrounding Bangkok for more than a year already, and yet, the tourism industry is still growing strong. It shows that tourists around the world in general are still confident with Bangkok, so do I.
I'm an optimistic kind of person. As long as my personal judgment of calculated risks shows an OK indication, I will not really bother about any rumor, and I will not care too much about what has happened to the place before. Well, if you mind too much, worry too much, how to travel with enjoyment?
Frankly, I never ever have any doubt about the security state in Bangkok at all, before visiting Bangkok. And I'm glad that I've brought my family to Bangkok as planned, or I wouldn't have experienced this fantastic trip. Yes, I really love traveling in Bangkok, and will definitely go back for more.
Pre-visit Impression As my company has active business network in Bangkok, some of the colleagues are frequently visiting there for business assignments. Thus, Bangkok has sometime been a conversation topic. In general, none of them has given negative comments on Bangkok tourism. In fact, I've always been cultured with the idea of how nice Bangkok is as a tourism city.
Due to my personal interest in Asian cultures, I find each of the Southeast Asia countries (with exception to Singapore, as it's too near to us haha) to be featured with distinctive and interesting ethnical cultures. That's why I was truly enjoying my
Siem Reap trip for the quest of learning the once-glorious-ancient-civilization. Thailand has no exception, and thus it has always been my wish to visit Bangkok. But, unfortunately, the plan for Bangkok trip has been withdrawn a couple of times since 2005, due to discouraging responses from my peer group, resulted from the bomb blast threats.
Before visiting Bangkok, from my experience of preparation for this trip, I'm impressed to learn about the supportive and well-structured public transportation network available in Bangkok.
Just by visiting the
BTS official website, I was truly amazed with the sufficient amount of valuable information featured, especially the train station site map. Clicking on each
BTS station, you can get a comprehensive map of the surrounding environment, which includes marking of restaurants, hotels, shopping complexes, and business entities. This is something that we can't find in any of the websites for all the 4 train networks available in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor.
During my visit at Bangkok, the taxi network is another public transportation infrastructure that I'm impressed with. As the main objective of this post is to give you an introductory view of my pre-visit impression on Bangkok, I shall "pen down" here, and will continue with a series of posts on my short traveling experiences at Bangkok.
Stay tuned!