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Published: November 7th 2009
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Back to Bangkok. What a city. It just doesnt seem to stop moving.
So we had 2days here, already done the temples and big buddhas, what to do next? We asked the friendliest travel agent in the world (his shop was down the road from our hotel) and he suggested that we take a boat ride to the start of the skytrain station and then ride the skytrain to Bangkoks biggest shopping mall, the MBK. 7 stories of shopping! We didnt buy a single thing apart from food, werent really needing anything apart from a pair of headphones - i sat on mine on the plane and broke them. couldnt find a decent pair for a good price! in 7 stories of shopping mall?? whats going on. there was a whole floor dedicated to cellphone shops. not real shops but just little stalls that have hundreds of different phones on display. and bored looking people behind the counter.
That night happened to be a very big festival. Loy Krathong. It involves buying a little floating flower arrangement with candles and incense on it, floating it away down he river along with any troubles you may have and as an
offering of giving back to the water which gives everything life. or something like that. We did this, bought the little things walked to the ferry station and took a ride on a very packed boat. the water was super rough and our floating thingees didnt have much of a long life. but it was fun nonetheless.
So now we are faced with another day in bangkok - bound by our flight at 7oclock. not wanting to waste the day we booked into a thai cooking course! it was fantastic. our teacher picked us up from our place and we took a cab through bangkoks terrible traffic. he explained to us on the way that he didnt like the festival that happened last night because it creates a lot of pollution in the water. (the cheaper floating things have a polystyrene bottom - more expensive ones are made from floating banana tree trunk). The cooking course was mint, we cooked a total of 5 dishes. a coconut milk soup, a curry, a stir fry, a salad and fish cakes. all involved a huge amount of chilli. he took us to the markets beforehand and we bought all the fresh
ingrediants that we needed. then we washed and prepared them all and cooked em up. beautiful. some people couldnt handle the hot hot chillis! good fun and we got a recipe book at the end. will be looking to recreate a couple of these in canada.
I also ate a scorpion and little crickets that were salt and vinegar flavoured. they were good, the scorpion was disgusting. gem even ate one of the little crickets. We got a bizzare fish massage where these little fish eat all the dead skin off your feet - they come out feeling super clean! And i got a haircut and cut throat shave for $8. deal.
LA. So we got to LA. checked into our hotel in the downtown district. - jet lagged as, couldnt sleep. extremely hungry in the morning so as soon as we thought it would be safe outside we ventured out for breakfast. about 7.30. The streets stunk of piss from the cities 48000 homeless. we saw a bunch of them just babbling away to themselves on street corners and looking in rubbish bins etc. not cool. The first thing shopkeepers do in the morning is scrub and
disinfect the footpath outside their shops. nice. We ate at a typical american coffee house. had 3 bagels between us. starving. So we caught the bus to Hollywood blvd to see the kodak theatre, grumans chinese theatre, the walk of fame etc. We were taken by how LAME it all was. after all our time in amazing asia we came to this superficial place where absolutely nothing really matters. fat americans going ga ga over stars names on the sidewalk did not interest me in the slightest. We were bored within minutes and pretty pissed off that we didnt think to go to the guggenheim instead. still we walked some of the walk and couldnt believe some of the names in there - P diddy, donald trump etc. a lot of people walked along and took pictures and videos of EVERY SINGLE STAR. what a waste of time. we only took one photo of me with the most worthy name we saw - bill cosby.
We ate at maccas and then faced with an afternoon of not knowing what to do booked into this stupid open bus tour of 50 hollywood stars homes and favourite hangouts. It was actually
better than i thought it would be, our guide was funny (adam faulkner i thought of you when we were on this bus. hollywood tour guide is probably your dream job, just drive around taking the piss out of people) as and a lot of the homes were beautiful. the amount of money flying around in beverly hills is incredible. That night Gem's relative Rosy took us out for dinner, had a yum mexican meal.
We spent the whole next day travelling, taxi picked us up at 9am and we got to our friends place at 3.30am. Its been snowing all day and we're just about to go out flathunting.
This is the last blog, im gonna upload photos onto facebook, its easier. gem'll put them up on hers too.
Keep in touch guys!
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