Shop 'til you drop.

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Wednesday July 4

We are trying to acclimate ourselves to getting up early - by Sunday, when we leave Chiang Mai, we will need to get up about 4:30 AM to make our flights. After that - while we are in Siem Reap, Cambodia - our days will start very early because of our tours.

Today we took the BTS Skytrain to Lumphini Park. The park is very pretty with a small lake and fountains, play areas and rest spots. People come there to exercise and do their Tai Chi routines. While we were sitting next to the lake, this very large (4-5 feet long) lizard walked up onto the shore about six feet from us! No idea what type of animal this was - but nobody even gave it notice (except us). Strange. No wonder I didn’t see any small animals running around.

After our park time, we hopped back on the BTS and headed over to the National Stadium stop. From there it was a short walk to the Jim Thompson House. The house complex, now a museum, is considered to one of the best examples of a classic Thai house structure - it is several hundred years old. The house is gorgeous and contains a great art collection, including some very rare examples of early Thai art and sculptures - an extremely interesting tour. Of course, there is a Jim Thompson silk store at the house location - Nancy bought a pillow cover and I bought a tie - the silk is beautiful … and expensive.

After that we went “Malling”. The next BTS stop is Siam Center, in the Ratchaprasong area, where all the large, modern shopping malls are located. We hit the Siam Discover Center, Siam Center and Siam Paragon - all are at least 8+ stories and extremely modern - every major designer label had a store … must be some money in Bangkok! Each one had a great food court - not like the ones in the USA - we had a great lunch at a Thai/Mediterranean fusion restaurant. Fortunately all of this is connected by a covered skywalk that runs between the Siam Center and Chit Lom BTS stops, because it started pouring. We ended our shopping at the Central Chitlom department store - Nancy was looking for some blue and white dishes but they did not have them. After all this the only purchase was an elephant cell phone charm for Nancy’s phone!

We ate dinner at the hotel - it was easy and the buffet is really very good - we had to start packing-up for the flight to Chiang Mai early Thursday morning.

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Comments

[Marge Grant]

What was it???
Funny looking animal, Jeff. Love the pictures. I have been going into your blog each day - so I subcribed.

[Dan from the Pennysaver]

Lizard
Hey Jeff! That was a monitor lizard you saw there. Apparently they are pretty common. See if you can catch one and bring it back for me! Ha Ha...just kidding!