Bangkok Days 1 & 2: Wat Pho, The Grand Palace and Wat Arun

Hello again!

We've just got back from the honeymoon of our dreams and I have so much to write about it all! As you might have guessed from the title of this post, we went to Thailand, spending a few days in Bangkok, two days at a jungle camp in Khao Sok National Park and a week at a beach resort in Khao Lak. During those two weeks, we also took day trips to the historic city of Ayutthaya, James Bond Island and other nearby sights, and the Surin Islands. So we packed a lot in, but at the same time, I feel like we had a lot of time to just relax and enjoy being in the moment.

I hadn't mentioned exactly where we were going on our honeymoon on this blog before, because Claudio says it's best not to tell too many people about things you're really looking forward to, in order not to tempt fate. I think he's right about that, because everything about this trip turned out even better than we imagined, and we both feel it was very possibly the best holiday we've ever had.

Our trip started out with us travelling down the M4 to Heathrow Airport on a rainy, windy Sunday and touching down in the humid heat of Bangkok the following afternoon. It was the first time either of us had ever been to Asia, and we couldn't quite believe we were finally there, especially Claudio, as it's almost unheard of for Chileans to travel to this part of the world. 

We didn't really know what to expect from the first part of our trip. To be honest, out of our three destinations, I think Bangkok was the part we were least excited about beforehand. However, we actually ended up loving our time there, and would have even liked an extra day or two or in the city.

We spent our first evening in our hotel, the Rembrandt Hotel, which had a kind of old-fashioned grandeur, which we quite liked.

Naturally, our favourite part was the rooftop pool! Even though it was actually on the 4th floor rather than the top of the building, it had great views across the city. After we got settled into our room, Claudio suggested going for an evening swim, which was a great idea, as it helped relax our muscles after the exhausting flight and also got us into the holiday feeling.

Back in our room later, I had my first taste of Thai food in Thailand! I ordered a red curry, which I expected to be similar to the Thai curries I've had at Thai restaurants in the UK. However, it was much, much spicier! The first mouthful was a bit of a shock, but after that, it was really delicious.

The next morning was when the jet lag hit us. We woke up at around 4 am feeling wide awake. I then made the mistake of going back to sleep too soon to the time when we wanted to get up and really struggled to get out of bed. But after some coffee and breakfast, we were ready to go and get the metro over to the city's main sights. We had a bit of a laugh at this sign in the metro station!

We got off at Sanam Chai station, which is one of the most beautiful underground stations we've ever been to.

The first place we visited was Wat Pho, a temple complex where you can find the famous Reclining Buddha statue.

We were absolutely amazed by the variety of temples, stupas and statues in the complex - it was completely unlike any place either of us had ever visited before. Some of the structures were so beautiful and ornate that it was almost hard to process.

The Reclining Buddha was definitely the highlight. At 46 metres long and 15 metres high, the size of it was just incredible.

Before continuing with our sightseeing, we stopped at a café for a energy boost. Claudio had a pineapple smoothie and I had mango sticky rice. This is a famous Thai dessert that I wanted to try, though I didn't expect to like it very much, as I sometimes find mango can taste soapy. However, this Thai mango was absolutely delicious and the dessert as a whole was really tasty and filling.

Our next stop was the Grand Palace. We had to make a quick detour to buy some elephant print trousers before entering, because the guard told us Claudio's shorts were too short. Claudio felt a bit embarrassed wearing them, even though there were many other men in the same position, but I was happy, as I'd wanted to buy a pair for myself anyway, and they became mine for the rest of the trip!

The Grand Palace is a complex of buildings including the famous Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and was another place that was hard to take in just because of the sheer amount of opulence surrounding us. It was even hard to take decent photos because almost every metre of space was taken up by a beautiful building or stupa.

Our final sightseeing stop of the day was Wat Arun, which lies on the other side of the river and is one of the most iconic landmarks of the city. We took the ferry over, which was only 5 baht, and then had a nice time exploring the temple. We even climbed part way up the main pagoda which was a bit scary but gave us great views! 

Back on the other side of the river, we looked for somewhere to grab some food, but lots of places were either closed or full. We eventually found a small place on a side street, where Claudio ordered noodles with tomato and an egg, and I ordered a tofu Pad Thai (the first of several during our trip!). Claudio was underwhelmed by his, but mine was pretty good.

We then went back to the hotel on the metro. By this point, it was rush hour, and more and more people got on the train as it travelled towards our stop, Sukhumvit. It was interesting to see that when we got off the train, people on the platforms waiting to get on had formed orderly queues - something we'd like to see happen in our own countries!

We spent the evening at the hotel, relaxing and swimming in the pool. We then decided to have dinner at the poolside restaurant, which is actually a Mexican restaurant. The food was amazing, especially the guacamole, which the chef made in front of us, and the setting was so nice. A great way to end our first full day in Bangkok!

Come back soon to read about our next day in Bangkok, when we discovered several different sides to the city, and met some of its animal inhabitants!

2025 Winter Travel

To be honest, I haven't got out a lot over the last couple of months, so I'm going to round my recent outings up into one post. Generally, this is not my favourite time of year to travel or go out, because it's just so cold, and being outside is just a struggle, but even so, it's still important to get a change of scenery from time to time. Since coming back from our wedding, we've had a few little trips out locally and one weekend away, which was mostly for practical reasons, but was also quite fun at the same time.

Here are the highlights!

Tewkesbury With Claudio

One weekend in January, we wanted to take a day trip, so Claudio was looking at this blog to see which interesting nearby places he hadn't visited yet. He read this post I wrote about visiting Tewkesbury in September 2023 and decided he'd like to go there.

I think Tewkesbury is quite an underrated place - it is very picturesque, but doesn't get the crowds that the nearby Cotswolds do. We had a nice, chilled-out time walking by the river, visiting the magnificent abbey, and exploring the town centre. 

After walking around in the cold, the best way to end an outing is, of course, by stopping off at a café! There are quite a few independent cafés in the town that looked interesting, but most were quite crowded. Then we came across a Greek Cypriot café called Coffee Mer Med that had a few free tables, and decided to go there for lunch. We really liked this place - both the food and the décor transported us to the Mediterranean, making us feel like we were inside a taverna on a sunny island, rather than in England on a cold, January day!

Reading, London and Pangbourne

I had a couple of days off from work recently, which we used to go and do some research on where we'd like to live in the near future. We've been thinking about Reading as a option, as it's quite easy to get from there into London on the Elizabeth Line, rents are cheaper than in London proper, and it's also quite convenient for us to go back home for visits.

To get a feel for what it would be like to live there, we stayed in an apartment at Premier Suites Reading rather than a hotel. We actually got upgraded to a two bedroom apartment, which had a really big living space, and we loved it. It was definitely the sort of property that we'd like to be living in within the next year or so.

Although I've passed through Reading train station (which is very modern and almost feels like an airport) many times, I'd never actually been to the town itself, so it was interesting to finally explore it. I hadn't heard much about it, and it was actually quite a pleasant surprise for both of us. Even though it's not in the capital itself, it definitely has a London vibe to it - when you come out of the station, you're greeted with the sight of high-rise buildings and traditional London taxis. The town centre is generally clean and attractive, and has a modern shopping mall, called the Oracle, which was quiet and calm when we visited on the Thursday we arrived, though it did fill up on the Saturday.

There's also a riverside area with lots of restaurants, which is quite picturesque. We went to Côte on our first day, taking advantage of a promo code that I'd got for entering a competition!

After lunch, we explored Forbury Gardens Park and Reading Abbey Ruins. The ruins were really striking, and it was great to see some of the historical side of the town.

Then we walked along the river...

...until we arrived at the Huntley Wharf housing development. These apartments reminded us of where we used to live in Santiago, and is the sort of place we could see ourselves living in the near future.

We continued walking and crossed over the River Thames to the Christchurch Meadow Playground, which was very spacious and even had a little outdoor pool, before picking up some supplies from Aldi and heading back to the flat to make Chilean hotdogs!

The following day, it was time to head into London! We took the Elizabeth Line into the city to get a feel of what commuting in would be like and also to get to see some more potential areas to live. We stopped off at Ealing Broadway to get to know the area a bit, as it's quite a convenient place in terms of transport. As it happened the weather was awful that day - freezing cold, rainy and windy - which wasn't much fun, but at least it meant we got to see potential areas to live at their worst, most depressing time of year, which was quite useful actually!

I felt fairly neutral about Ealing - it didn't quite have the London vibe I was expecting, and seemed like any other generic British town, but we did like exploring Walpole Park, where you can find Pitzhanger Manor, an old manor house with an art gallery inside.

After lunch, we took the District Line over to Barking in the East End of London, as we'd seen there were quite a few places to rent there. The area just outside the train station seemed a bit run down, but other parts were a bit nicer. We went to Abbey Green Park, which has the ruins of an old abbey. Nearby, there are lots of new, modern apartment buildings, which looked nice, but we weren't convinced we liked the area enough to live there. We're thinking that we might next look into Stratford as a place to live, as I really liked it when I visited during my Gap Year in 2015.

This was probably the first time I've visited London without seeing any of the touristic areas. I've always felt a buzz of excitement when visiting the capital, from Little Venice to the Greenwich Meridian and everywhere in between. But I didn't really feel that in either Ealing or Barking, and was surprised that Reading actually felt more "London" to me than they did.

The next morning, we decided to get a feel for the sort of weekend activities we would do if we were living in Reading, and took a very short train journey to the picturesque village of Pangbourne, which is located on the border of two areas of natural beauty: the North Wessex Downs and the Chilterns. 

Claudio especially enjoyed Pangbourne, because it has both an Aston Martin and a Lamborghini dealership!

We enjoyed walking around the traditional English village and then across the river to Whitchurch-on-Thames, which was very scenic indeed.

The only thing missing was a cute café or tearoom like we have in the Cotswolds!

We went back to Reading and had a quick look round the shops before going to find some lunch in the riverside area. One downside to the town was that most of the restaurants were packed, even though it was after 2 pm, which isn't very usual for the UK. Eventually, we went to a Japanese noodle place called Marugame Udon, which wasn't too crowded. I hadn't heard of it before, but I looked it up and found out that it's a chain of restaurants that are only located in London and Reading! The food was really good and the portions were very generous.

After lunch, we had a walk along part of the river we hadn't explored yet, and looked at some more apartment buildings.

We finished off our weekend in Reading with coffees and a pastry in Gail's bakery. This is somewhere I wanted to try specifically because it's a London chain with a few branches around the South East, and not somewhere you can find where we live in the South West (Coffee #1 is our regional coffee chain!). However, the café was quite cramped (we had to wait for a seat) and the food and drink was a little pricey. But it was nice to be able to say we'd tried it!

Overall, the weekend gave us more of an insight into the what it would be like to live the London/Reading lifestyle! We've now explored quite a few potential places to live in and around the capital: Borehamwood in Hertfordshire, Redhill in Surrey, Reading in Berkshire, Ealing in West London and Barking in East London. Of course, there are plenty more possibilities, but Reading is looking like the winner at the moment.

I'm looking forward to when we finally move and blogging all about it - but first of all, we've got a honeymoon to enjoy! I'll be back here on this blog next month, hopefully with some very exciting travel stories to share!

2024 Review and 2025 Plans

As is my tradition on this blog, I'm writing a review of my year, and as is also my tradition, I'm writing it a good few weeks into the New Year! I always find it useful to take stock of where I am in life, how I've progressed over the last 12 months, and what I want to change in the year ahead.

My 2024 was a year that was mostly taken up by two big projects: my husband Claudio's UK visa application and planning our wedding. Both of these took a lot of time, effort and money, and in the case of the former, stress and worry. Fortunately, Claudio's visa was approved, and our wedding was a really special day that we enjoyed even more than we expected. It's wonderful to now be married and also to have the right to live in the same country, but I'm really glad we can now remove those two big tasks from our headspace. Though of course, 2025 is going to bring some brand new challenges!

Here's my recap of the year, our travels, and what we've got planned for 2025...

2024 Recap

Our 2024 started on the happy note of having just got engaged, but it was also quite a uncertain time for us. Claudio had arrived in Europe a few weeks earlier after finishing his work contract in Chile, and we had moved back into my parents' house after Christmas while we figured out what to do next.

We'd been living together in a nice little flat in Santiago until May 2023, but had decided, for various reasons, that our future was in Europe. I made a series of big decisions, which I thought would bring us more stability: changing career from TEFL to marketing, going to Malta for three months to complete an internship at a marketing agency, and then accepting my first full-time job in the UK the following month. I even chose to be based in Bristol over London, although I much prefer London, because I thought it would be a better option financially. 

Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of just how awful the cost of living situation in the UK was - my salary is more than what we were both earning in Chile combined, and I thought I'd be able to get set up in a little flat before Claudio arrived in December, but I realised shortly after accepting my job offer that that wouldn't be possible. My parents encouraged me to move into a flatshare in Bristol, which I had big reservations about, and I spent a miserable few months there. It was incredibly depressing to have worked so hard to better myself, only to end up with a quality of life that was far worse than what I'd had before.

As I hated living in Bristol, and Claudio couldn't join me in the flatshare anyway, it made sense to move back home in the new year and start commuting into work. It was a relief to live somewhere clean and comfortable again, and also to have most of my salary left over at the end of the month. 

We began looking at our next options, but there wasn't a clear answer. To be honest, I would have been happy to go back to our old life in Chile, but Claudio really wanted to give life in Europe a go. However, there were no countries in the rest of Europe that seemed like the right fit in terms of jobs or lifestyle, and I didn't earn enough for Claudio to be able to apply for a UK visa as my spouse.

But in March, while passing through London after coming back from holiday, we both realised that this was the city where we really wanted to be based. We did some more research into the UK spouse visa, and found out that we had a way of getting around the minimum salary requirement. So we decided to go ahead and apply. This was a super stressful and expensive process, involving Claudio returning to Chile for a few months in order to complete the application. It was a challenging time all round, but thankfully, the application was approved, and he was able to return to the UK, this time as a resident, at the end of September.

A couple of months later, we went off to Chile together for our wedding! This was such a special way to end the year after what had been quite a tough 18 months for both of us. Our wedding day was filled with happiness and love, and it was great to go into the new year as a married couple.

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Looking back, it feels like not much has changed since January last year, as we're still living at home and going into Bristol every week. I'll be honest; I'm nowhere near where I wanted or expected to be in life at my age, and there have been many moments when I've struggled a lot with this and been very harsh on myself. Throughout my life, I've always been very ambitious, hard working and high achieving, and it seems like I must have either been quite unlucky or made some poor choices in order to be nearly 30 and not successful enough to afford to live independently. Aside from the effect on my self esteem, I'm also extremely concerned about the impact this could have on our entire future if our situation doesn't improve quickly. 

But I try to remind myself that we made some big steps forward in deciding where we want to be based, getting the visa sorted, and getting married. I also try to remember that almost nothing I've wanted in life has ever come easily - I've often had to fight harder and be more patient than other people in order to reach life's milestones. I know that this won't change, but I also know that in most cases, I have ended up achieving my goals eventually. We're going to keep working hard, and hopefully 2025 will be a breakthrough year for us.

2024 Travels

Now onto a lighter topic! 

2024 was a year in which I travelled less compared with 2022 and 2023, but we still had a couple of epic trips.

In March, we went to Rome for the first time and had a lovely time exploring its sights, including the Colosseum, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. Of course, we took the opportunity to visit the Vatican City while we were there, which brought me up to a total of 30 countries visited in my life so far. I'd always hoped I'd reach 30 countries before turning 30, so I feel pretty happy about that!

For most of the rest of the year, our time and money were very focused on the visa application and wedding, but we did have a few nice weekends away: London at the start of May, Swansea at the end of May, and then London again in November.

Then of course, we spent time in Chile for our wedding. We also had a short but really enjoyable minimoon in Argentina afterwards, and overall had a great few weeks enjoying the summer and time with family and friends.

2025 Plans

The first big thing we've got coming up in 2025 is our honeymoon - we've booked a very special "once in a lifetime" kind of holiday and are really excited about it!

For financial reasons, we don't plan to have any other big trips this year - maybe a short-haul holiday in September/October depending on how things work out for us. But hopefully I'll find some nice content for this blog anyway!

The other big plan for this year is to move to the London area after our honeymoon. At the moment we're only on one income, and it's a low one, so we're aware things are going to be difficult at first. It would be amazing if Claudio got a job before we went, but it's not at all easy to land a job in London while living a couple of hours away in the middle of the countryside. It's definitely going to be much easier for him to pick up work once we're actually there, even if it's not something using his degree, so we've decided we need to just go for it. Maybe living there will be all we've hoped for, or maybe it won't, but sometimes you have to take chances in life.

Let's make this year a great one!

My 2024 highlights from left to right, starting from top left: The Vatican City; The Colosseum; Bracelet Bay in Wales; Feeling Christmassy at Covent Garden in London; Our wedding in Quintero; Park Hyatt Hotel in Mendoza, where we stayed for our minimoon