What we did: skyped, planned, MBK mall, patpong market,
Budget: 3000B/$100; Spent: 4923B/$164
We skyped with Frank and Dan this morning after our breakfast buffet. They want a bunch of things from Bangkok, so they sent us a list. Should be pretty easy to find everything they want. Most things are pretty easy to get. It's just a matter of bargaining everything down to the right price.
I also skyped with my brother Chris before we decided to do some trip planning. We've been putting off planning for what we will do after Bangkok. The first thing we realized we needed to do was book a train to Chiang Mai, our next destination located in northern Thailand.
We took an auto-rickshaw to the train station to see if we could get a train ticket. A lady approached us at the front of the station and started telling us about our options for getting around Thailand. We were on our guard, but she turned out to be pretty innocent; she was just working for a travel agent around the corner. She gave us some advice, although nothing special.
We went inside and it turned out that all the overnight trains were booked for the day after tomorrow, so we were led by a worker to the travel agency inside the train station where we could book an overnight bus ticket. We were offered two different bus options, one for 2100R and the other for 2400R, which seemed high, so we declined. We decided to go to the agency recommended by the lady we talked to outside the station.
When we left the station, the lady approached us to ask if we had booked our train. We told her we wanted to see the travel agency, so she led us there. She obviously makes commission on this place, but she wasn't pushy or anything. Once we were there, we sat down with a guy who proceeded to try to sell us on a packaged deal that would take us to all the places we wanted to see in Thailand. Once he had broken everything down, we realized that it would be much too expensive if we booked through him, so we left. We were very proud of ourselves for making that decision. We decided that we had done all this before, and there was no reason we couldn't book everything ourselves in Thailand. Unfortunately, the guy wouldn't book an overnight train ticket for us, even though he had some, because he only books packages. Nice. So we left and went back to the travel agency in the train station and tried to get the cost of the bus trip down a bit; we succeeded in getting the better bus for 2100R instead of 2400R, which we felt was a small victory. We still had a nagging feeling we were getting ripped off, though.
We left the train station on the same auto-rickshaw that had brought us there. We gave him a tip for waiting for so long, even though we're pretty sure he kept busy while 'waiting' for us.
We went to MBK mall for lunch and browsed around. We shopped a bit for Frank and Dan and bought designer underwear for Dan from a very nice lady for 80B each. Just before this another lady had refused to give us any discount.
Around 7pm, we took the skytrain to Patpong market, which is located in the red light district. Just before entering the actual market area, we bought me a cool-looking tanktop, that ended up not fitting!!, but we only spent 100B on it, so we’ll give it to someone as a gift (Dan??).
We proceeded to have some awful experiences with vendors, many of them swearing in Thai at Patty. Meanwhile, guys everywhere were standing around showing sex show menus. It was an interesting experience.
I wanted to buy a fake watch, so the first watch vendor I saw I started looking. On a fake Rolex, the first price was 2500B, which is crazy. I bartered it down to 1000B, which still seems expensive, but it's a fine looking watch! I'm very pleased with it. As we were walking away from the first watch vendor, we approaches a second watch vendor and found a really nice Rado watch. I wasn't interested in buying another watch for 1000B, so after the lady offered it to me for 1800B I threw out 500B as my offer. Interestingly, she wasn't even surprised by my offer...makes me think I overpaid by a lot for my first watch! Anyway, we finally agreed on 700B. Whatever, these watches are awesome!
While I was bartering with the lady, Patty went to the next stall over and started bartering with the lady there. I guess there was some confusion over prices and Patty ended up walking away. This made the lady really angry and she started swearing in English at Patty, like she had been personally offended.
Patty shook it off and started looking at watches where I had bought mine. When she decided against buying a watch and started walking away, the lady I bought my watch from started swearing at her in Thai, and said something about her being a "bad person", or something stupid like that. My response: "Be nice!" I really wish I'd given her a piece of my mind.
Patty was pretty unhappy at this point and I don't blame her. She really wanted to find sunglasses so we found a vendor and started looking. She offered a price on some sunglasses, but the lady didn't budge and wasn't treating Patty very nicely, either. Patty asked that I barter with the lady, but I was so annoyed at this point that I didn't do a very good job. We ended up paying a less than great price for the sunglasses, although Patty really liked them.
Patty was now beyond upset, so we decided to grab a cup of coffee at a nice coffee shop nearby.
I bought 2 watches, argued with 2 ladies, one selling sunglasses the other was the one we bought the 2nd watch from. We talked about how awful some of the ladies were to buy from and we laughed about how I told the watch lady to “be nice” after she was swearing at Patty in Thai, especially after I had just bought a watch from her. Unbelievable!
After cooling off a bit, we ventured back into the war zone that is Patpong market. This time, we approached people very differently, mostly with a cold neglect. It’s unfortunate, but this seemed to provoke better reactions from people, which is also bizarre. We tend to be pretty friendly with people, but that seems to backfire for some stupid reason!
We wandered down the street looking at various things until we came to a small shop carrying electronics. I wandered inside and was immediately drawn to some headphones called Beats by Dr. Dre. These are pretty fancy headphones and we gave them a listen using our iPhone. The smaller ones were good, but the larger ones were amazing. The guy offered them to us for 850B and we ended up buying them for 550B, which is about 7% of their cost at FutureShop. I’m also pretty sure we could have gone lower, which is crazy. I can’t believe we got them for that price!! We've always wanted headphones like these, and I really didn't think we'd ever get any!
After this we got lucky with some shirts for Patty. She bought a white tanktop with a Panda on it that we had seen before. We were just waiting for the right price…finally we got it! She also picked up two other tanktops, one with sunglasses on it and the other with ear phones on it. Bangkok has some really cool shirts.
Speaking of shirts…remember the Mr. Men children’s books? There is one shirt that plays on these books, with the title Mr. Jihad. The typical-looking Mr. Man is wearing a headpiece of some sort and has explosives strapped onto his back! I was torn between laughter and mild outrage. I realize that it’s meant in jest, but there’s also not too much funny about someone blowing themselves up to kill other people. It’s a pretty cruel joke… Humour is a funny thing, indeed (pun kinda intended).
We were pretty hungry at this point and thankfully saw a McDonald’s right across the street. It was one of those moments when the stars were aligned and we asked for a place to eat and it was provided. It’s so wonderful when things like that happen!
We unfortunately didn't enjoy our meal as much as usual (probably because how good Thai food is by comparison!), but it filled our empty tummies, so the food succeeded in its most basic function. By the time we finished, it was nearly midnight, which is when the skytrain closes, so we rushed to the nearest stop and jumped on a train bound for home.
In no time at all we were back in our hotel and jumped into bed, exhausted from a grueling day of shopping. Sometimes it’s really tough to be us!!
Budget: 3000B/$100; Spent: 4923B/$164
We skyped with Frank and Dan this morning after our breakfast buffet. They want a bunch of things from Bangkok, so they sent us a list. Should be pretty easy to find everything they want. Most things are pretty easy to get. It's just a matter of bargaining everything down to the right price.
I also skyped with my brother Chris before we decided to do some trip planning. We've been putting off planning for what we will do after Bangkok. The first thing we realized we needed to do was book a train to Chiang Mai, our next destination located in northern Thailand.
We took an auto-rickshaw to the train station to see if we could get a train ticket. A lady approached us at the front of the station and started telling us about our options for getting around Thailand. We were on our guard, but she turned out to be pretty innocent; she was just working for a travel agent around the corner. She gave us some advice, although nothing special.
We went inside and it turned out that all the overnight trains were booked for the day after tomorrow, so we were led by a worker to the travel agency inside the train station where we could book an overnight bus ticket. We were offered two different bus options, one for 2100R and the other for 2400R, which seemed high, so we declined. We decided to go to the agency recommended by the lady we talked to outside the station.
When we left the station, the lady approached us to ask if we had booked our train. We told her we wanted to see the travel agency, so she led us there. She obviously makes commission on this place, but she wasn't pushy or anything. Once we were there, we sat down with a guy who proceeded to try to sell us on a packaged deal that would take us to all the places we wanted to see in Thailand. Once he had broken everything down, we realized that it would be much too expensive if we booked through him, so we left. We were very proud of ourselves for making that decision. We decided that we had done all this before, and there was no reason we couldn't book everything ourselves in Thailand. Unfortunately, the guy wouldn't book an overnight train ticket for us, even though he had some, because he only books packages. Nice. So we left and went back to the travel agency in the train station and tried to get the cost of the bus trip down a bit; we succeeded in getting the better bus for 2100R instead of 2400R, which we felt was a small victory. We still had a nagging feeling we were getting ripped off, though.
We left the train station on the same auto-rickshaw that had brought us there. We gave him a tip for waiting for so long, even though we're pretty sure he kept busy while 'waiting' for us.
We went to MBK mall for lunch and browsed around. We shopped a bit for Frank and Dan and bought designer underwear for Dan from a very nice lady for 80B each. Just before this another lady had refused to give us any discount.
Around 7pm, we took the skytrain to Patpong market, which is located in the red light district. Just before entering the actual market area, we bought me a cool-looking tanktop, that ended up not fitting!!, but we only spent 100B on it, so we’ll give it to someone as a gift (Dan??).
We proceeded to have some awful experiences with vendors, many of them swearing in Thai at Patty. Meanwhile, guys everywhere were standing around showing sex show menus. It was an interesting experience.
I wanted to buy a fake watch, so the first watch vendor I saw I started looking. On a fake Rolex, the first price was 2500B, which is crazy. I bartered it down to 1000B, which still seems expensive, but it's a fine looking watch! I'm very pleased with it. As we were walking away from the first watch vendor, we approaches a second watch vendor and found a really nice Rado watch. I wasn't interested in buying another watch for 1000B, so after the lady offered it to me for 1800B I threw out 500B as my offer. Interestingly, she wasn't even surprised by my offer...makes me think I overpaid by a lot for my first watch! Anyway, we finally agreed on 700B. Whatever, these watches are awesome!
While I was bartering with the lady, Patty went to the next stall over and started bartering with the lady there. I guess there was some confusion over prices and Patty ended up walking away. This made the lady really angry and she started swearing in English at Patty, like she had been personally offended.
Patty shook it off and started looking at watches where I had bought mine. When she decided against buying a watch and started walking away, the lady I bought my watch from started swearing at her in Thai, and said something about her being a "bad person", or something stupid like that. My response: "Be nice!" I really wish I'd given her a piece of my mind.
Patty was pretty unhappy at this point and I don't blame her. She really wanted to find sunglasses so we found a vendor and started looking. She offered a price on some sunglasses, but the lady didn't budge and wasn't treating Patty very nicely, either. Patty asked that I barter with the lady, but I was so annoyed at this point that I didn't do a very good job. We ended up paying a less than great price for the sunglasses, although Patty really liked them.
Patty was now beyond upset, so we decided to grab a cup of coffee at a nice coffee shop nearby.
I bought 2 watches, argued with 2 ladies, one selling sunglasses the other was the one we bought the 2nd watch from. We talked about how awful some of the ladies were to buy from and we laughed about how I told the watch lady to “be nice” after she was swearing at Patty in Thai, especially after I had just bought a watch from her. Unbelievable!
After cooling off a bit, we ventured back into the war zone that is Patpong market. This time, we approached people very differently, mostly with a cold neglect. It’s unfortunate, but this seemed to provoke better reactions from people, which is also bizarre. We tend to be pretty friendly with people, but that seems to backfire for some stupid reason!
We wandered down the street looking at various things until we came to a small shop carrying electronics. I wandered inside and was immediately drawn to some headphones called Beats by Dr. Dre. These are pretty fancy headphones and we gave them a listen using our iPhone. The smaller ones were good, but the larger ones were amazing. The guy offered them to us for 850B and we ended up buying them for 550B, which is about 7% of their cost at FutureShop. I’m also pretty sure we could have gone lower, which is crazy. I can’t believe we got them for that price!! We've always wanted headphones like these, and I really didn't think we'd ever get any!
After this we got lucky with some shirts for Patty. She bought a white tanktop with a Panda on it that we had seen before. We were just waiting for the right price…finally we got it! She also picked up two other tanktops, one with sunglasses on it and the other with ear phones on it. Bangkok has some really cool shirts.
Speaking of shirts…remember the Mr. Men children’s books? There is one shirt that plays on these books, with the title Mr. Jihad. The typical-looking Mr. Man is wearing a headpiece of some sort and has explosives strapped onto his back! I was torn between laughter and mild outrage. I realize that it’s meant in jest, but there’s also not too much funny about someone blowing themselves up to kill other people. It’s a pretty cruel joke… Humour is a funny thing, indeed (pun kinda intended).
We were pretty hungry at this point and thankfully saw a McDonald’s right across the street. It was one of those moments when the stars were aligned and we asked for a place to eat and it was provided. It’s so wonderful when things like that happen!
We unfortunately didn't enjoy our meal as much as usual (probably because how good Thai food is by comparison!), but it filled our empty tummies, so the food succeeded in its most basic function. By the time we finished, it was nearly midnight, which is when the skytrain closes, so we rushed to the nearest stop and jumped on a train bound for home.
In no time at all we were back in our hotel and jumped into bed, exhausted from a grueling day of shopping. Sometimes it’s really tough to be us!!
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