"And We Danced All Night To The Best Song Everrrrr....."

So anyone who knows me knows that I really just love boy bands.  When I was little, I was OBSESSED with Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, 98 degrees, etc. etc.  I used to tear out those pictures from Tiger Beat magazine and cover my walls, floor to ceiling, with photos of my favorites.  Well, even at 27, I'm unashamed to say my love for boy bands is still alive and well.  Ha!  

I wasn't a One Direction fan until I came to Cambodia and started listening to iTunes radio Top 40 station.  I kept hearing songs by them that were soooooo catchy, I'd find myself singing them occasionally.  I found their new CD "Four" at the market, and for $1.50, I figured why not, so I  starting listening to them while running and doing exercises at the gym.  Well, in February, I found out they were coming to Bangkok as part of their world tour.  Bangkok is a short one-hour flight away from Phnom Penh and a huge, fun city to escape to for a weekend.  After trying and failing to convince any of my close friends here, I'd given up on finding fellow boy band fangirls to attend the concert with me.  By accident, I was talking about wanting to go to the concert with a friend when she told me she knew some girls going.  One of the girls I had meet briefly here and there around town and the other was a stranger to me.   Knowing these girls were likely some of the coolest girls in Phnom Penh (hello, they were going to Bangkok for the concert....), I decided to send them a FB inviting myself along.  

Not surprisingly, they welcomed me to the fold (again, so cool..ha!).  They left a few days early and spent  couple of days doing things around Bangkok, and I finally joined them on Friday evening.  I took an evening flight out of Phnom Penh and arrived in plenty of time to settle into the hostel and grab some incredible Thai street food for dinner.  

On Saturday, we decided to hit the malls.  Having already been to Bangkok and seen all the "touristy" and culturally important things, we opted for some shopping and eating.  I am leaving for New Zealand in a few weeks where it will be autumn, so I knew I needed to do a little shopping and get some things for the cold weather.  We also got distracted by the immense amount of American food in the food court and ended up eating (impressively, I might add) McDonalds, Krispy Kreme, and Starbucks before noon ('Merica!).  After spending some money and buying some things here and there, we decided we needed to nap and store up some energy for 1D; we wanted to be fully prepared to scream, dance, and just over-all fan girl out at the concert.  We went back to the hostel and proceeded to read books and take 2+ hour long naps.  Tough life, huh?  

After getting ready, we jumped in a cab and heading to the arena.  I was a little concerned because it's an outdoor arena, and it's hotter than you-know-what in Bangkok/SE Asia in general.  But we were so high up in the nosebleeds, we had a great breeze! Haha.  We got there early to check out the scene and pick up our tickets and luckily even had enough time to buy cutouts of our favorite 1D members as well as get some awesome, glittery face tattoos.  There was a moment, while sitting on the ground getting a glitter face tattoo that read "Harry", surrounded by 13 year old Thai girls, that I thought to myself..."you are a 27 year old successful attorney....is this appropriate?"  Then I thought, "HELL YEAH!."  And that was the end of that :)  I'm all about doing stuff for the sake of a good story and adventure, so I hope that regardless of my age or status, I never lose my sense of fun.  I love laughing and being silly, and if you know me, know that I'm EASILY convinced to do about anything.  

We heading in to the concert to find our seats, and after climbing stairs for a good 20 minutes, we arrived!  Probably the best part about the whole concert was the two 14 year old Thai girls who sat behind us.  They immediately befriended us, telling us it was their first concert.  They LOVED One Direction, like for serious....LOOOOOVED.  They knew every, single word of every, single song.  Please note that this is not an exaggeration, I'm telling you the God's honest truth.  They had taken a bus to Bangkok from their home 200 miles away.  They were so pumped, and their excitement made us excitement....so basically we were a group of 5 (some in our late 20s and other in their early teens) screaming and laughing and taking massive amounts of selfies.  Go ahead and take a moment to imagine this in your head....it's hilarious, huh?  

Anyways, the concert was a blast.  Regardless of your taste in music, the One Direction songs are catchy and fun to dance to, so that's exactly what we did.  They played for about 1 hour and 45 minutes, ending with "Best Song Ever" which really brought down the house.  Ha! After the concert, we finally caught an empty cab and headed back to the hostel.  We proceeding to wake up the whole hostel room with One Direction singing and making our cutouts dance to the tune; everyone really loved it (not).  

Here are some pics from the concert. 

With the guys before the show.  They were so happy we made it.  

Fellow Fan Girls. 

CAN YOU SEE THEM?! Haha, me either.  They were the size of ants. 

Glitter tattoo?  Check.  Harry Styles dancing cutout?   Check.  I'm ready! 

Our new friends :) 

On Sunday, we wanted to take advantage of Bangkok and it's selection of great restaurants, so we opted for brunch at a place called Roast.  We had the most amazing brunch and coffee there.  After about a 45 minutes wait (which was well worth it), we gorged ourselves on fabulous lattes and lemonade, french toast and pulled pork burgers.  Wow.  It was incredible.  I was also rocking my Kentucky jersey (since it was game day and all), and met a family from the US.  The husband/father used to live in Kentucky when he was in the military about 20 or so years ago.  He loved it (of course) so we talked about bourbon, basketball, and how awesome, in general, Kentucky is.  After our meal, we packed up our stuff and heading to the airport.  We spend some of our last remaining Baht on some souveniers for our friends back in Cambo, boarded the plane, and began to come down from our boy band high.   

Expresso Latte.  Ice cube expresso and fresh milk.

Strawberry and banana stuffed french toast with fresh maple syrup and whipped cream. 

Gosh, it was so good. 

In the airport.  Got some funny looks.  But whatev...YOLO. 

Overall, it was a great and hilarious weekend.  I really enjoyed getting out of Cambodia for the weekend.  And I had the best time with Janay and Sophie!  No regrets! 

Weekend in Bangkok

Two weeks ago I got to take my first trip, and it was exciting.  We left early on a Thursday afternoon and headed to the airport to catch our late afternoon flight to Bangkok.  We had a three-day weekend, and I had a visa run to make so it was the perfect opportunity to head somewhere fun for the weekend.  The great place about my community here in Cambodia is there is always a travel buddy (or buddies in this case).  Pretty much as soon as I mentioned heading to Bangkok for my visa run, I had two quick volunteers who graciously offered to fly to the big city, sightsee, and eat an incredibly huge amount of Thai food.  

We arrived in Bangkok on Thursday evening, checked into our amazing (but incredibly cheap...perhaps because of recent political issues in Bangkok? oh well!), and headed out to find the famous Thai street food.  We started with some meat on sticks (is there anything better than just grilled meat on sticks, I'm thinking no) then graduated to a $1 noodle bowl with some kind of chicken concoction in it.  I have to say Thailand has some of the most amazing food I've ever tasted while traveling.  I felt like we ate all weekend.  Not to mention there was a Starbucks and McDonalds located right down the road, so we started every morning there.  It's funny what you crave in a foreign country because I honestly couldn't tell you the last time I had a McDonald's breakfast in the US.  Oh well, it was delicious and totally hit the spot in Bangkok, so cheers to McMuffins! 

On Friday (which was also a Buddhist holiday), we headed to do some sightseeing at some famous temples and sightseeing spots. We visited some amazing temples, had some great food, and just enjoyed wandering all over the old part of the city.  It was also photography heaven.  

The Royal Palace and Wats

Wat Phra Kaew

Really beautiful, intricate details on the temples. 



Wat Pho.  This is a giant golden reclining Buddha.  It was literally so huge. 



Please note my amazing outfit.  I had to rent a skirt and wear my coat.  Buddha likes conservatively dressed women, so I had to oblige. 



Street Food.  Shrimp Pad Thai.  YES, PLEASE.

Wat Arun



These stairs were incredibly steep.  It was quite the excursion to the top. Also, this is my new friend Shaz, the former Legal Intern who is staying for a few extra months.  She is super fun and really amazing.

Picture with the temple. 



I'm from Kentucky, y'all.  I gotta take pictures with a horse if I see one!

After sightseeing for the entire day, we decided to go to a movie at the mall.  First of all, it has to be made clear that Asians love malls.  Seriously, they are always super crowded, and these malls are nicer than anything we have in America.  The movie theatre is also pretty extravagant.  For example, for $30 you can sit on a reclining soft, with a blanket, get a free massage and unlimited popcorn/wine/champagne while watching a new movie.  And while we didn't splurge on this (mostly because it was the Buddhist holiday so we couldn't do the all-you-can-drink-champagne which would have been the best part anyway), we did check it out.

On Saturday, we went to the Jim Thompson house.  He was an American who started producing Thai silk products.  He loved Thailand and moved there permanently.  He combined like 6-something traditional Thai houses into one big house surrounded by lush gardens into his permanent home.  He mysteriously disappeared one day while visiting Malaysia and no one knows what happened to him.  It's kinda weird, very conspiracy-theory-ish.  Google him, it's kind of fascinating.  But anyways, his house has become a huge tourist stop just because it's super relaxing and an absolutely beautiful display of a traditional Thai home and gardens.  It was a morning well spent.



Spirit House.  Whenever you build, it's important to have a spirit house so the spirits you are disturbing have a place to live.  You see these everywhere in Thailand and Cambodia and probably everywhere else in SE Asia. 

Enjoying some fresh fruit smoothies at the cafe.  Delicious. 

After leaving the Jim Thompson house, we went to Terminal 21 which is a huge Bangkok mall that has multiple stories with each designed to look like a different international city.  They have Rome, London, Tokyo, Paris, San Francisco.  It is huge and super fancy and ever the BATHROOMS are decorated to match the theme.  It was amazing to walk around in and air-conditioned which was important since it was boiling hot in Bangkok.  I also bought my first "Asian-y" item.  See the picture of the fabulous, quirky shoes I bought below.  Bright, cartoonish things are very popular in Asia, so my shoes are very fashionable.  I thought they were adorable, and while I'm not sure how much I'll wear them in normal life back in the US, they were $9 and I couldn't resist.

After leaving the mall, we walked around and enjoyed another night of Thai street food.  I indulged in some kind of coconut curry with noodles.  YUM.  We finished the night at a rooftop bar on one of the skyscrapers in Bangkok.  All in all, another fabulous day in Bangkok.



Street market full of food vendors. 



Coconut chicken curry with noodles.  YUM.



Cutest shoes ever.  I'm sure Jess from "New Girl" would totally rock these.

On Sunday, we just slept in, had more McDonalds and Starbucks, then headed to the airport which ended up being a total cluster.  But atlas, we arrived back in PP late Sunday afternoon.  Good weekend in Bangkok.  I'm glad I went, don't know if I'll go back, but am enjoying the life of a traveler these days nonetheless.