Day 3 - Happy Birthday to me!!

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Happy Birthday to me.......to be honest after the hectic day we had yesterday I had given zero thought to the fact that it is my birthday today and had Todd not reminded me first thing this morning I would have forgotten completely! But here it is, another year older, but we had such a cool time I managed not to dwell on my decrepit aged state one bit the whole day 😊

Ok, so continuing on from where I left off this morning......we managed to get Kalyb out of the bathroom and then also discovered that the reason we couldn't get hot water in the second bathroom's shower was because the cold tap is the hot tap and vice versa......go figure because in the ensuite the hot is hot and the cold is cold, so the hotel people are testing us lol!! Anyhoo, we got a good nights sleep despite having one of those famous 'firm' Asian mattresses that I have read about. Yeah it's not as pillow top shnumfy as ours at home but its a comfortable enough bed. We have a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment and it's actually quite nice, almost as big as our house at home.......but on the 14th floor. Speaking of the 14th floor, it isn't REALLY on the 14th floor because this is (I think) the first hotel I have stayed at that subscribes to the notion that 13 is an unlucky number......and the floor skips 13 and goes straight to 14. Kinda cool, can't remember ever seeing a lift that goes from 12 to 14 before, but it matters not to me! I have no real feelings positive or negative about 13 so I am all good!

After we got ready we went down to the buffet breakky in the hotel restaurant, the Nara (we are at the Narathiwas Hotel). Everything was yum, a few odd things we couldn't identify, but generally a really good buffet that will tempt us again to eat way too much every day I imagine. Todd found the egg guy who will make you any kind of eggs you want fresh and the boys and I loaded up on french toast and pancakes and bacon and fruit and stuff. I missed the asian breakfast section this morning but I am definitely hitting it tomorrow, the kids are a little hesitant about fried rice and noodles for breakfast but I am all over that shit! Looked amazing when the people next to us brought some over, I was annoyed I didn't see it on my first circuit of the buffet.

After breakfast we were on a mission to find some sim cards for our phones, we hit the 7-11 up the road and boom, easy as that. Once we got our phones all set up we set out to see if we could manage to get ourselves around Bangkok. I'd done my research, so I knew where we wanted to go, but I was in no way confident that we were going to get there so I was ecstatically surprised when we managed to navigate that shit with ease! We took the BRT rapid bus to the nearest BTS station (BTS being the skytrain), and then got the skytrain right to National Stadium station which is next to the MBK shopping centre. This behemoth is a 7 story mall/indoor market that you could spend days getting lost in. The people who worked there were so amazingly friendly and our plan to ease our way into Thailand by doing something a little bit familiar like wandering a shopping mall kinda worked. It was certainly still an exercise in culture shock, and we have walked away from there with a list of what words and gestures we absolutely must learn asap. The Thai people were really gracious and understanding of our clumsiness and ignorance of things, but I am hoping we can do a little bit better than 'clueless western tourist' over the next couple of weeks. Realising we are truly the minority here takes a little getting used to, and it is certainly humbling. The only people we heard speaking English fluently today was us! Even the few tourists we spotted that we thought might be fellow Aussies were all European, so we are certainly the outsiders......just a little confronting and scary! Luckily most of the Thai people we encountered today could either read the hand signals of desperate tourists or speak enough English to get through a transaction. We still thoroughly suck at bartering despite our practice in Bali lol 😊

So anyway we had a great day shopping, we bought some bits and pieces, we found a weird food court that you couldn't pay cash in? You have to buy a pre-paid card loaded with cash and then use it to purchase food and drinks from the vendors, any unspent money can be refunded but only on the day you load it up. It was strange, but we got some drinks for refreshment after a hard morning's shopping! Corey knew there was an arcade, cinema and bowling alley at the top of the mall (my mistake mentioning that one at the start of the trip!) so he harangued us non-stop until we all agreed to go up for a look. The arcade was crazy, we got ourselves some tokens and dispersed to shoot zombies and attempt to win teddy bears. Todd and I played this crazy 4D zombie shooting game that was seriously intense, it was called Dark Escape. Scared the shit outta me lol! The surround sound, vibrating/shaking seats and hot blasts of air that hit your face when these zombies jump out at you is crazy, it measures your heart rate and at the end tells you how much of a scaredy cat you were during the game......Toddy and I were both very girly lol.

After the arcade we went for some lunch. I was really keen for our first real yummy Thai meal, but be fucked if we could find a Thai restaurant! There were fast food bits like Pizza Hut and KFC and Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Sizzler even! But nothing Thai. So we ended up at this weird but wonderful little Japanese place called MaiDreamin where all the waitresses were dressed in little french maid costumes with kitty cat ears on. It was fun when we let ourselves get into it, lots of sillyness and the girls trying to teach us these Japanese phrases to contribute and join in on the act. Food was yummy but we encountered the strange Thai law where you are not allowed to buy alcohol between 2 and 5pm. Not exactly sure what that is about, and I had read about it before we got here, but it was not a big deal. We had a really yum lunch anyway.

Corey was chomping at the bit to go bowling after lunch so we decided to have a go. We were nearly the only ones there so we had a crew of about 5 staff all hanging around with us and helping when the lane we were in frequently stuffed up. It looked like a normal Strike Bowling place but seriously the mechanism kept freezing and it was really weird, and a little worrying, seeing the dude jump in behind the pins and scramble about up in the machinery each time. None of these young boys spoke a word of English but we all had a great time with them and they clapped every time we bowled a good ball......and sometimes even when it was a shit ball lol.

We'd had about enough by then so we managed to backtrack our public transport steps to our hotel again pretty easily ( we are all chuffed at our Bangkok transport expertise now!) and decided to hit the pool. Holy mofo christ, how does a city that never gets under 30 degrees manage to have a pool so bloody cold! The thing was freezing, I got in up to my thighs and that was enough for me! I retreated to the heated spa which was incredibly pleasant. Todd and the boys all braved the pool the crazy idiots! But they were able to come warm up in the spa with me after their swim. Its a gorgeous infinity pool, and lazing back in there looking out over the Bangkok city view with a cold Heinekin we all truly felt like we are on holiday, woohoo!!

This was all pretty late by then, we thought about going back out to the street for some food but decided to just stay in and have some room service again instead. This time I was determined to get some Thai food and by god did I get some!! I ordered the Kao Pad Kraprow, which was stirfried mince with chilli and holy basil with rice. OMG was it good......but I tell you what, my arse is going to thank me tomorrow that I tasted it before smothering it with the extra chilli sauce that it was delivered with, because holy crap it was spicy! Who puts extra chilli on that shit?? It was seriously so good, but my nose was running and my eyes were watering and I was scarfing down the side of cucumber for some cooling relief WITHOUT the extra heat. I shudder to think what it would have been like had I poured on the extra spice!

Ok, I'm in bed now and it is after midnight, I gotta get myself some sleep because we have an early start tomorrow.....its TEMPLE DAY! I am so excited, super keen for some culture 😊

Photos of today to be uploaded asap, its a bit of a chore and I'm buggered so it will have to wait until later. Cheers all for the birthday wishes, I have yet to read them all but I appreciate every one of them 😊

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