hey guys welcome to Bangkok Thailand we are going to talk to you today about
some of the don'ts
Marco what we've started oh jeez oh my god I was getting my coffee
where we at I'm just about to tell them the first don't all
right let's go
the first dont is when you arrive in Bangkok and get off the plane you'll
have lots of people approaching you to offer rides like limousine rides private
car rides do not take those we've read about that and heard about that they
will charge you a lot of money and sometimes even drive you somewhere and
change you into an old car so what we recommend that you do is when you arrive
go to the first floor and take a metered taxi and you go and you get a ticket and
then you get in the car and you negotiate the price or you ask them to
turn on the meter so you get the best possible price also hotels will offer
pickups from the airport and they charge you an exorbitant amount of money way
too much yeah so we don't recommend doing that at all our hotel wanted to
make us take a mini bus because they said a car was too small for four of us
and that's complete BS we have a small car at home so don't do that
another don't is don't forget to get your vaccines on time we knew all the
vaccines that we needed to get but we waited a little bit too long for some of them
because some of them take like three months there's a process to get you can't
just go and get one and then you're done one of them was Japanese encephalitis we
ended up going to Thailand to a clinic here at the hospital kind of
kind of weird getting your shots done in a foreign country you're not sure what
it's like and they help but the health care system looks really good here so good it
was kind of my bad I was supposed to plan the shots and I didn't do a very
good job of that I missed on the final one but we pay less for it anyway
so it turned okay yeah another don't is there are tons of cool temples in Thailand
that you will want to visit you can't for the ladies you can't have bare
shoulders and men I think or knees showing so make sure you wear longer
shorts and skirts and bring a scarf to cover your shoulders it's okay for kids
but just make sure you do that if you do forget usually at the bigger temples
they do have scarves that you can borrow but really important if you want to go
in because they're so cool to see the next don't is that don't rely on your
credit cards here in Thailand and debit card make sure you get cash and have
lots of it because most places don't use credit cards and if they do use
a credit card they will charge you a service fee that is pretty high even
though withdrawing money is there's a high service fee but you can take out a
lot of cash we took out 20,000 baht you take out more if you want that
equates to 20,000 bahts is about 850 Canadian so yeah carry that stuff
around and you know always asking for cash here pick it in small bill if you can
yeah because a lot it's so weird but the taxis and tuk tuks
they don't have changed like if it costs you say 500 baht and you give them a
thousand baht they don't have the change to get you you need exact money I don't
know why that is but you know we found that we need to break the money and have
smaller bills yeah I don't get it too because they're getting cash all day so
what have any cash I don't get it next one is when you go to the markets and
go shopping expect to negotiate it is expected here don't pay at the ticketed
price a good rule of thumb is to pay offer like half of what the prices and
they'll come down or like no no it's kind of a fun process and everybody's
smiling and and it's a lot of fun in my opinion they already have a price that
they want to sell it at a so they mark it up so it's a lot of fun here that's
one of the experiences that you should do with totally expected so we bought a couple of things I don't know we feel
like we had a good deal in the end so it was a lot of fun yeah well actually
we bought these snorkels at a place and we're like we thought we got a really good
deal then I looked online oh I could get it for even less online
so it's kind of funny another don't which is hard for me is with
public washrooms here don't assume that they're going to be clean don't assume
that they will have toilet paper and soap to wash your hands so I always
carry a roll of toilet paper with me and lots of hand sanitizer also some of the
washrooms can be different here they have stand-up toilet so that is a little
challenging to get used to especially with small children the other thing is
like Europe there are many paid bathrooms that are supposed to be
cleaner they're not always cleaner but just be prepared about the whole washroom
thing it takes getting used to also there's toilet paper outside of some of
the washrooms for the ones that have it Marco thought the toilet paper was hand
towels to dry your hand after washing your hands because they don't have anything else
it's just toilet paper like it just sticks to your hands like what is this
no that's to bring with you in the bathroom
so another don't is don't do elephant trekking or ride the elephants
start without me again yeah we did we started again yep so like I
said don't ride the elephants try to visit an ethical elephant sanctuary you
get to feed and bathe the elephants and they're treated in humane conditions
we've heard some bad things about riding elephants and we saw some chained up
I've also heard that riding them and the carriages on their backs are really
harmful to the animals so we really recommend that you don't try that
ya we're no expert on the matter its just stuff we just heard of and saw
as well yeah yeah yeah we saw some stuff it was amazing though
the older rescue elephants you get to like like touch them and feed them and
play with them basically it's kind of cool playing with a 50 year old they're
all from their late 40s and 50s elephants so pretty fun the next thing
is don't just see the sights during the day make sure you do some night tours or
seeing the sights at night we did a tour with tuk tuk tour I mean they call it
tuk tuks here in Thailand we got corrected so many times with that but yeah
you get to see the sights all lit up and if you do a tour like we did we get to
like get to jump ahead of lines and go into restaurants where there's like an
hour an hour and a half line up and you just walk right in and and you get to go
all these cool places that you wouldn't even think about going to like the
flower market and you get like ice cream that's made from coconuts and oh and
their famous Pad Thai restaurant thipsamai yeah so may we normally like I think there's an
hour lineup with something like that this is for Bangkok specifically and
that's like the whole city is lit up and there's so much to do here I mean we've
barely scratched the surface but the one thing is if you have little kids it
might be harder because the tour ends at 11:00 at night our kids were 7 and 11
they did because it was so exciting they were able to stay up so just a warning
for those of you that have toddlers and because you do a night tour you get
to get scared to death coming back on the highway on a tuk tuk going about a
hundred kilometers an hour is no seat belts it's basically like being in a basket going 100 km/hour
it was awesome though now that we lived yeah
okay so the final don't is so important but do not forget to experience a Thai
massage here they are so amazing we even got them done for the kids so the whole
family went like twice and it was amazing it was really different
experience to the massages that I experienced in Canada like I got a punch
to the head and a punch to the back but you know what not in a painful way it
was it was great and you have to try it and they're super cheap I think the
lowest we paid was like about fifteen or sixteen dollars Canadian so you can't
beat that yeah and I even got to have a couples
massage with their brother that came in to visit us that was interesting that was so
weird that was weird but oh well all is good
and that's a wrap
you