so my fiance Lloyd and i came to Thailand about two weeks ago now
and there were a few things that i wish we knew before we were coming here
so this is our top seven things we wish we knew before coming to Thailand in 2022
okay so when Lloyd and i travel we don't exactly do a whole lot of research on the
place that we're going to we kind of just buy the tickets when we want to go and just show
up but these are some of the things we wish we would have known before coming to Thailand
this one shocked me actually when we landed in Thailand we only had a small amount of money so
we went to get dinner and needed to get some money out atm charged us i think it was 220 Thailand
which is about its over eight dollars Australian that was a shock I thought maybe we went to the
wrong atm so I tried a couple of other ATMs and discovered that they all charge that amount after
some digging around we figured out that one way to avoid that is to go into the bank with your
passport and your atm card and they'll let you withdraw money over the counter and not charge you
those fees so that's a little hack just to go into the bank yourself and withdraw money from Nutella
number two is e-sim cards which is something we've only just discovered thanks to today's
video sponsor olafly so if you're like me and you have no idea what an e-sim is so basically
it's a virtual sim card that's already built into your smartphone you do have to check
on the olify website if your phone is compatible with their esims but most smartphones are
esims are the best thing to have while traveling best way to stay connected
without the data roaming charges or worrying about getting a phone bill that's unexpected
it's extremely easy to set up and purchase all you need to do is jump over to the olifly website
and purchase the esim you'll get sent a qr code right away all you have to do is scan that qr code
on your smartphone and follow the steps and you'll have your asim already set up ready
to use in a new country so as we said we only just recently discovered all the flight and
the esim which is really handy because we've just come to thailand we've started using it
we're actually going to vietnam next then on to the philippines and who knows after that
but we actually purchased the asia e-sim card so we can use it in any country across asia so
whenever we're arriving in a new country we don't need to worry about purchasing a new sim card i
wish we had known this six months ago i didn't have a clue what an e-sim was when we landed
in bali six months ago our flight was delayed by two hours and we landed at about 11 30 at night we
had not much battery on our phones no data i had just enough cash on me to pay for a taxi we got
to our accommodation and there was no food around us whatsoever there was no restaurants open and
we had no way of going to look for food if we had just had an e-sim card we would have been able to
catch a taxi or go for a walk somewhere we spent the whole next day trying to sort out our phones
we found a phone shop we bought sim cards which were pretty expensive and they didn't even work
for the first day we had to go back to that shop twice to get them working and it pretty much
wasted a day and a half which is our first day and a half in bali which we would have loved to
have spent just enjoying by the pool or down the beach had we have known about all the fly
and their e sims things would have been so much smoother i really wish we knew about them six
months ago so that's why we've partnered with them on this video today because we think it'll
actually bring a lot of value to you guys if you've ever arrived at an airport and have been
looking around for sim cards they're all they're usually more expensive and not as environmentally
friendly because you're constantly getting the little pieces of plastic to put into your phone
this is way more environmentally friendly as it's just downloaded into directly into your
phone a lot more user friendly so we do have a discount code for you guys today you get five
percent off your order if you use code lloyd and mandy or click the link in the description
so number three would be the street food I like a lot of other people was a bit scared
to try street food there was a lot of street food available in Bali but nothing compared to
Thailand it's everywhere in any city you go to you can find a night market or just a back alley
street vendor somewhere and the food is amazing so good so high quality so fresh and affordable
uh and you're actually amongst the locals like actually eating at restaurants with local people
so you get to actually experience what it's like to live here yeah and another bonus is
that it's really cheap yeah yeah probably half the price of eating in a normal restaurant
yeah especially and at the markets the Thais know how to do a good market if you're in a city where
they have a night market make sure you go because so many different food options of
things that I've never heard of before that were really tasty so yeah make sure you check them out
number four on the list is something we just discovered so in thailand there is basically
the equivalent to uber which is called grab and you can get food delivered you can get a taxi
or a ride it's basically just the same as uber but we were using that for a while until we discovered
much cheaper version which is called bolt thanks to one of our subscribers
yes who dm'd us and let us know so we've saved a ton of money in the last couple of weeks using
the bolt app i would definitely recommend using the app all you need is an email address and i
think phone number to sign up so you can download the app as soon as you get to thailand and start
using bolt right away we've been hooked up with these massive like buses that have sort of looked
like the vegas buses with like mirrors and lights and stuff in it it's been super affordable and
like a fun experience and it's all to ourselves yes so the way buses the way bolt works is it'll
access both private cars and available taxis as well sometimes so that's why sometimes you get
the option of going in like a big commercial taxi bus and they were pretty luxurious too
number five is something we only recently discovered so if you don't know drinking in
public in thailand is actually legal um although i wouldn't recommend just walking around with an
open beer can anywhere but if you're at the markets or something like that it's totally
fine there is one catch to that which is that you cannot purchase alcohol between the hours of 2 pm
and 5 pm and that's from any major convenience stores so like 7-eleven and things like that
i do think if you're in a restaurant they'll still serve you alcohol because you're sitting down and
eating but if you're trying to get take-away alcohol between those hours you can't do it
i'm not sure why the law is like that probably to discourage people from just drinking all that yeah
drinking flat out but it's actually crazy because we didn't know it and going into 7-eleven they
actually completely cover up the entire alcohol section so you can't even like see it pretty much
yeah and it's yeah it's blocked off between those hours so keep that in mind if you're wanting to do
some day drinking yeah so and if you're in a shop like i was and they tell you they can't serve you
the beer it's not because they're trying to be mean or anything it's just the law they're not
allowed to that also goes the same for buddha day which we experienced last week yeah so buddha day
was on a sunday and uh our waitress told us that they weren't allowed to serve any alcohol all day
so number six is the transport so transport actually flying into Thailand was super simple
we found it in comparison to flying into Bali obviously things are starting to open up a lot
we pretty much just walked straight into Thailand there was not really any queues
it's pretty simple to travel at the moment yeah really straightforward yeah and as well as that
getting anywhere around Thailand is super easy so flights are really cheap but there's also plenty
of options like trains and buses tuk-tuks you can actually get an overnight train from Bangkok
to Chiang Mai there's overnight buses from Bangkok to a bunch of different cities and they're all
really cheap so don't stress you don't need to hire a car if you're over here or anything like
that you can get around using public transport really easy we're actually taking a bus to I think
in the next few days and then a ferry and it's all booked online really cheap and really easy
and number seven is thai speaking so we didn't realize this until one of our subscribers let us
know that there is actually one way that men say something to be polite and women say something to
be polite yes i think i've been speaking like a woman i think i've been i've been like swapping
back and forth sort of because i wasn't sure exactly which one i was supposed to be saying but
for women to say thank you it's kakunka and for men it's capcom cup yeah something like that yeah
i'll probably get maybe find it for that if you're like us and you like to just be able to
greet people in the local language um to be polite then make sure you're doing it the right way you
might get some funny looks yeah just watch some other youtube videos there's some really helpful
ones on here that just give you the basics so you speak in correct polite terms um so
you don't get some funny looks like we have yeah i don't think it's a big deal i think the thais
appreciate you trying to speak in the local language anyway um but that's just something
to know if you are gonna be talking in the local language yeah we hope you guys have found this
video helpful in some way if you did don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to our
channel as we upload very regularly to our channel we will see you guys in the next one bye you