Another day, another experience

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Well, I finally have some time and money for a good blog update, but I don't really know what to say. It would be way too hard right now to describe all the different sights we've seen and crazy things we've been experiencing, so I suppose I'll keep this mostly to a run down of the days events. I think most people have an idea of what Bangkok is like. Since it's so varied, probably whatever you picture Bangkok to be in correct, at least somewhere in this city. Just go with your vision, and pretend I explained it to you that way =)

Today we took the subway (No taxis today! YES!) to Chatoochuk (no idea how to spell that) market, which was unbelievably big and sprawling. It's hard to get an idea of just how big it was because we were never very sure where we were, but since we rarely came across the same stall twice we knew it had to be quite large. They had everything you could possibly want there, and it was all arranged sort of by merchandise category, which was nice. And the stuff was pretty decent, too. Wayyyy better than the tacky, yucky stuff that was for sale in the market we saw on day one. They actually had some really nice home decor items and some great art, plus all the typical asian clothes, both hippie style and knockoff designer style, plus jewellery, beautiful handmade paper, tons of stuff made out of sculpie (modeling clay stuff)... the list goes on. Oh! And there was even a pet section, selling pet items and, yes, even some pets. They had these adorable dog sports jerseys, and I REALLY wanted to buy one for Joey but I think they might be too small. A purchase might need to be made, anyways... No air conditioning, so after a couple hours of wandering around we were seriously fried. No delicious breakfast buffet at our new hostel (just toast) so we didn't have a lot of sustinance to keep us going. Before long, we were running on empty and extremely hot. The time had come to buy food from a street stall. The place we ate at had a fairly large table section with umbrellas and was super busy, so we figured it was a safe option. The waitress simply said "chicken?" and all we could reply with was "yes." Sooo we waited to see what we would get. We eventually received a bowl of chicken broth with some Mr. Noodle style noodles, a chicken drumstick in the middle, and various other parts of chicken that were less easy to identify. Well, I WAS able to identify the foot easily. Chicken feet have always seriously grossed me out, so I stayed away from that particular piece. Mark and Derek went for it. After the chicken soup, we all splurged on a coconut purchase. Basically, it's a husked cocount that they chop open with a machete in front of you and give you a straw, and you drink the sweet, sweet cocount water inside. Mmmm soo good. Costs 25B, which is just under a CAN Dollar.

By that time we'd had enough of the market. None of us were buying anything anyways because we're coming back to Bangkok in January and we don't want to have to carry any purchases around with us on our travels until then. Sooo we got back on the train and took it to a starkly different shopping area: Siam Square. Basically, it's in the area of town where that massive, fancy Central World mall was that we went to yesterday. We found this mall kind of boring, though, and we were seriously drained already (the air con helped a bit though). One highlight was some live entertainment we happened upon. It was like a tradional Thai puppet show with this cheeky trickster trying to win the heart of a princess/maiden girl (I think.........). It was really funny, and the puppeteers were great. There were three puppeteers to each puppet, and they moved in a manner that was in line with the puppet's actions, so the whole thing was quite a feast for the eyes. Then there was a bit of a Thai traditional dance show, which was also very good. After checking out the "auto show," which was essentially a floor entirely dedicated to high end cars like Porshe, Hummer, Lambergini, etc, (and this was not the ground floor of the mall, either!) we were board of Siam and decided to go back to CentralWorld. There was a sushi place that Derek and Mark saw yesterday and were dying to check out. I decided I'd play along for the experience, even though I HATE seafood and most fish.

The sushi place was an all you can eat buffet sort of thing, where trains of food on little dishes pass you buy and you have 1h 15min to consume as much as you desire. Also, you have a bowl of boiling soup in front of you that you can use to cook stuff in. It was quite an experience. Oh, and it cost about $8CAN (which was a super pricey meal for us, but we went for it anyway). I didn't have a problem overeating since I wasn't really in to the food, but Derek and Mark both made short work of the sushi train. Mark's been hiccuping pretty much since we finished there, and Derek now feels extremely ill and tired. Plus he got a random nose bleed. Ohhhh well I'm sure he'll be fine soon. OK, now he's telling me he feels just fine. Glad to hear it! We're waiting to get in to our hotel room right now. Long story short, but we don't have a key to it, though somehow it got locked. It sounds like the lady who runs this place may be sawing in to our door....

I'll have to get back to you on whether we ever see our belongs again. Ahhh Thailand.

We also watched some more live concerts at the beer garden, but it wasn't quite as good as light night, I didn't think. Plus the Elle fashion week's events weren't very happening, we didn't hang out with our fashion elite friends from last night =)

Tomorrwo we move to the backpacker district. We're all rather drained, so we might not do much of anything. Oh, and we're going to go to the train station to book at ticket to an island so we can get a bungalow on the beach and relax in seclusion. Ahhhhh I can't wait!!

I think I have figured out (hopefully) how to use the phone, so I'll try to call home tomorrow. Internet should be way more prevalent in our new district, so I'm sure another update will come tomorrow. After we move to our beach bungalow, however, I'm not so sure how much internetting I'll be doing.

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Photos

Cheeky Puppet
He was so funny, and even interacted with the audience!

Beer Garden Concert
Just right at the front of the mall, for all to enjoy! Gotta love Bangkok

Our Madras Room
Clean and air conditioned, but not quite as advertised, which annoyed us. Still, we're happy we stayed here and the woman who ran the place was really nice. Her daughter was adorable, too!

Comments

[DAD]

Joey's a big boy
Joey has a 24" chest, which is pretty impressive since I'm only 38" but weigh 5X as much.