Travel Day 8 / no workout today!

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A complete day off with nothing to do and the day has just blazed past before I even knew it. Being able to eat breakfast is quite a treat also, but the timing is not very good. Seems like every tour bus, or tour group checking out shows up about 7:30 and stampedes into breakfast. I’ll enjoy the early, quiet breakfast next week.

The first part of my exploration day started with a visit to the Wat complex at Ekamai that I see 4 times a day from the BTS. There wasn’t much info I could find there, so I had to look it up online. I have a few pictures, but there wasn’t much to see. From there, I went to Terminal 21 which is the closest shopping mall. I remember the last trip there were some really nice little shops inside there, along with the 5 story escalator. Walking there at 10 in the morning, I found every taxi driver and tour promoter was out and recruiting. One even asked if I’d rather just have some cocaine. Good grief…. Spent a couple hours wandering through the shopping. They are having some sort of coffee festival there for the next week, with many small coffee brewers set up on the main floor. The lowest floor is basically a farmers market and grocery store. The shops had so many different foods that really looked good. I did go for a local brewed iced matcha tea. I had just read an article about what matcha is (finely ground young green tea leaves), that nothing is thrown away, and the health benefits from it. There were a couple other drinks I wanted to try, so it’s likely I’ll head there for my lunch break this week. After getting back to the hotel, and taking care of some basic housekeeping, I decided to go check out the Muay Thai facility at the hotel, and the gym. There were some people working out in the ring, but nothing special. I did go to the gym just for a very light workout. The gym facilities seem to keep improving every time and now has newer machines, although they still have a couple vintage ones from out first trips here. Those should be in a museum somewhere. After that, there was a little time reading today before heading out for an early dinner at Bully’s. It’s still there, although I think the last trip I noted it was remodeled to be a smaller place, and now has a fitness business taking up about half of its former space. Just finishing up dinner and writing to head back for a little more reading, and a little laundry to be ready for the week ahead. All in all, a nice relaxing day.

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Photos

Group photo from Facebook post
This was the training group from the afternoon in the group photo.

Wat That Thong
I found out looking up info on this temple is that it provides traditional Buddhist rituals and Thai cremations ceremonies.

Buddha at Wat
The Wat is easily seen from the BTS. I think this Buddha is also, but can’t recall at the moment.

Comments

[Mick]

Glad your having another great trip. I'm impressed by your dedication.