Thailand trip - Day 1, Bangkok

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OK, so it's Saturday night, and we're having a wonderful time, so a bit of a delay in writing this all up ...
And pictures will come later, since I'm using the hotel computer for this, and it's rather slow (in fact so slow that David has been trying to get on-line for about 1 hour, and not managing ...).
We left Tel Aviv on Monday evening with a 20 minute delay (at 22:30), and had a reasonably decent flight, considering that it was 10.5 hours long. We had dinner and breakfast (both edible) on the plane, and landed at 14:00 on Tuesday afternoon.
We didn't have to wait for baggage since we always travel light - what doesn't go into our hand baggage doesn't go with us, at least on our way TO our vacation. Immigration went amazingly fast, and by 14:15 we were through customs.
First thing to do was get a local Thai phone number. We had been told that Orange was on the 3rd floor, but discovered it to be on the 2nd floor. After a 10-minute walk along the 3rd floor, we found the escalator back down, to discover our hotel taxi pick-up right there. We knew it was going to be more expensive than taking a regular taxi, but decided that since the hotel was a bit out of the way, we would splash out and use the taxi pick-up. Unless you have an out-of-the-way hotel, or a free pick-up, use the regular taxis with a meter - it should be around 250 Baht ($7-8 US, or about 25 shekels).
Back to Orange. First we asked for a Thai SIM, but it turned out that our Israeli Orange phones couldn't take a foreign SIM. For Israeli phones, in order to have a foreign sim, one needs to get a code from Orange. It costs 100 shekels, and takes between 3-7 days, unless you are lucky and they happen to have a code for your model of phone handy. For a short trip to Thailand, it's a waste of money, since what we did in the end is to rent a phone with local sim - for 2 weeks rental, the rental is free (you give a credit card deposit which you get back when you bring the phone back). The local sim cost us 349 Baht, for 305 Baht worth of calls, which we top up when it runs out. Local calls cost 1.5 Baht (15 agorot) per minute, and calls to Israel cost us 6 Baht (about 60 agorot) per minute. Anyway, all this took about half an hour, so we actually left the airport at around 3pm.
Between 3 and 6 in the afternoon is rush-hour, so expect to take time. By quarter to 4 we had arrived at the hotel - the Phranakorn Nornlen . I had found the hotel on Trip Advisor, where it is #2 ! This hotel is really quaint, and absolutely a quiet oasis in the middle of crazy Bangkok. It's not high deluxe, but then the price isn't high deluxe either. You get an automatic reduction of 15%!f(MISSING)or a booking of 3 nights or more, and 20%!f(MISSING)or 6 nights or more. I had booked a twin room (202) - their most expensive type of room, and for that we had two huge beds - about 1.5 meters wide each! There is no cupboard in the room - there are hooks on the wall, and an open two-tiered bench which serves as shelves. The bathroom has an open shower and brick floor. The water could be hotter, and the pressure could be better, but the general atmostphere of the place more than makes up for that. The hotel is organic, and they have an organic garden on the 4th floor. Breakfast is different every day, and very tasty.
Unpacking didn't take very long, of course, so off we went with our Nancy Chandler map of Bangkok . First stop was MBK - an excuse to try out the express boat on the Chao Praya river, and the Skytrain (BTS). The boat and the train are nothing special to write home about, but you have to try them out at least once, and they do cut through the traffic pretty well. Our hotel was a 13 minute walk to the Thewet boat pier, and taking the yellow boat (which stops at all stops) down river to the main stop - Saphan Thaksin (the connection with the BTS) took about 40 minutes, after which the BTS took about 10 minutes to Siam Square. All in all, more than 1 hour - actually I think that a taxi or tuk-tuk would have been quicker and cheaper, especially if you are 2 or more people.
And talking about tuk-tuks .... we thought we were being oh so clever in getting them down from 200 Baht to 150 Baht. Well, again - take a tuk-tuk once, for the atmosphere, but after that take a metered taxi - it will cost miles less, and you'll be in air-conditioned comfort. For example: from out hotel to Siam Square the taxi is about 50 Baht (the meter starts at 35). We couldn't get a tuk-tuk for less than 150 !!
MBK - what can I say about it that hasn't been said before. You need a whole day to see all 5 huge floors of market. It's basically a huge warren of a mall with tiny shops, all cheap, mostly either fakes or the same thing as 5 other shops in the same general area. Best thing is to walk up one aisle, turn and walk down the parallel one, aisle after aisle, until you finish the floor. Then onto the next floor.
I had booked tickets in advance for the Calypso Cabaret at the Asia hotel. We had front-row seats for the 8:15pm show (there is another show at 9:45pm), and paid 900 Baht (about 90 shekels, $25US) including 1 drink. The show was absolutely amazing - some of the "lady-boys" were the most gorgeous girls you could imagine, with fantastic figures and lovely legs! A few you could tell were men, but I think that was part of the show. It's billed as "family friendly", and there were a few children there. It's probably no less family friendly than what they see on TV, but I'm not sure I would take mine to see it.
Anyway, by the end of the show, we were pretty exhausted, and since we were being picked up the following morning at 6:00, we decided to call it a day and get a tuk-tuk (that was when we thought we were being so clever!) back to the hotel.

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