Day 11 - "Downtown - everything's waiting for you"

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Exhaustion. We spent all day in Bangkok, shopping and walking. We went to two giant shopping centers, a local market, and we passed a lot of street shops on the busy sidewalks. The first shopping center had 6 floors but wasn’t that enormous. We walked around every floor, then had lunch at the top floor before moving on. The other shopping center had 7 floors, but you could have hid the Titanic on one floor that’s how big, crowded, and confusing it was. Only luck had all 7 of us meet up and find our way out. Lots of shops, though, and we all managed to buy something – even if I was far from finished when Mom and Dad crashed and we had to leave.

Actually, we hadn’t planned to go to a shopping center, let alone two. Kasper had read about a local market with 8000 stands that we wanted to check out. We even used public transportation (small jump-right-on bus and two trains) to get there – Kasper did a great job of finding out which train to catch and which station to get off at – and we were quite proud when we found it. Unfortunately, it was a local weekend market so we have to go back tomorrow or Sunday. That’s why we ended up in the busy, but air-conditioned, shopping centers. Another experience we can add to our long list.

Bangkok was not what I expected. In my mind, it was a mix of Hong Kong, India, and New York. In real life, it wasn’t quite as busy, smoggy, or impressive. But it was okay and I want to go back at least once before we leave.

(Not a lot of pictures today because we spent so much time inside the shopping centers)

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Photos

View from train station in Bangkok
(One of many train stations in Bangkok)

Bangkok
(Blurry due to Dad's sweat - camera was in his breast pocket. Yes, gross.)

Train "ticket"
We did get a real ticket on the other train

Kia
Dad felt like getting a face shot of Kia