Budget: 1800B/$60; Spent: 2714B/$91
We had a loooong bus ride from Chiang Mai and arrived in Bangkok at 5:30am this morning. We didn't sleep much either and unfortunately we have another overnight bus ride to Krabi to look forward to. Guess we can't compain too much though, we will be in one of the most beautiful beaches in the world in 2 days!
We dragged ourselves off the bus and hitched a ride to our hotel on a tuk tuk. Arriving at A-one Inn felt like coming home. It was pretty awesome. The only sucky part was that we would have to wait a few hours before we could check in. Fortunately though, we arrived 30 minutes before breakfast would be served.
Breakfast time rolled around and we began munching most of the morning. We did laps around the buffet table about every half an hour. It was like we never left this place, we did after all spend about 10 days here.
The hotel told us we would have to pay extra money to check in early into our room and/or use the wifi so we decided to be frugal and just lock our stuff away in a storage room and head out to MBK mall. We browsed around for a bit. Jeff wants another sleeveless shirt for the beach so we looked a bit for one. We didn’t find anything and eventually just went back to the hotel to check in finally.
I immediately hopped in the shower and brushed my teeth. Meanwhile Jeff spoke with Frank and Dan with facetime. My sister wants a pair of knock-off Birkenstock sandals from MBK mall to use for Europe so we decided to go back to MBK mall to have lunch and do some shopping after getting off the phone with them.
MBK mall has also started to feel a bit like home. We went straight to the food court on the top floor and ordered the papaya salad from one stall, and the classic chicken pad thai from another stall. It’s been nice because recently, my appetite has decreased slightly. Actually both of us have found that we’re no longer craving junk food at all. We suspect this has something to do with returning to civilization and being liberated from the slight depression we had in India. Without exaggerating though, we definitely used food to comfort ourselves in India and now that we have access to everything and anything in Thailand, we no longer crave junk food! It’s a beautiful thing, especially since we’ll be on a beach in a couple days.
After our yummy lunch we browsed around for a shirt for Jeff. We found one for $5 but we thought we might as well wait to see if we can get it for cheaper at Patpong tonight. We finally came across the Birkenstocks my sister wanted in the right colour and the right size for the right price ($10) and they’re really really comfy. We ended up buying them without negotiating and then I ended up getting some fake Havaiana flip flops for the beach for $5 as well.
We made our way to Paragon Mall which is made up of mostly high-end luxury and designer stores. But they do have some more affordable stores. We obviously by-passed the designer frocks and snotty store clerks and headed straight for H&M. I bought a pair of earrings for $3 and then we decided to see what was playing in the movie theatre on the 5th floor. They happened to have a showing of Les Mis starting in 10 minutes so we jumped on the opportunity and bought tickets right away. Landon and Lewis from Chiang Mai were raving about Les Mis so that was a big part of the allure. Jeff was hungry so he bought himself some chicken mcnuggets from Mc D’s inside the theatre and we shared an ice coffee. We paid about $15 for the both of us to get in, but the seats were awesome. They’re basically like lazy-boy recliners and there’s tons of leg room. The seats were definitely not as nice as India, but still nice, and heck Thailand gets extra points just for being Thailand and not India.
Les Mis turned out to be a disappointment. Musicals, I just can’t stand them. I will give Anne Hathaway credit though, she was excellent. The actors are obviously quite talented but I just didn’t enjoy the story. It seemed to drag on and on and continued even when you thought it had to be the end. Jeff and I both thought Russel Crow was also a bad pick for the role of Javer. Just didn’t seem to fit the part very well. We were joking about giving Landon and Lewis crap for recommending the movie and for even suggesting that it wasn’t a musical! Not sure which movie they were watching because the Les Mis we saw was all singing. Boooooo.
It was about 7:30pm when we walked out of the movie. We jumped on a metro and got dropped off at Sala Daeng and went to Patpong market. Arriving in Patpong market is like realizing you're going to war. It's Consumers vs. vendors… female vendors that is. You gotta go in there with a strategy and a very thick skin or they’ll gobble you up and spit you out. They can be nasty little critters. I believe we mentioned we were sworn at and yelled at on numerous occasions the first time we went. For some reason we want to go back tonight… (...long pause)... well as my mom would say “we like the bad life.” We’re ready this time though. We got our game faces on and now we know our opponents.
Of course nothing changed about the ladies working inside the market, they were their usual catty selves.
Oddly though, people were generally quite nice today. Their pleasant demeanors were probably magnified because the last time we were in Bangkok the people were simply not very nice. The vast majority of our interactions with the locals over our 10-day stay had been quite unpleasant and at times we were offended. But this time around it was just different and that along with our amazing experience in Chiang Mai is quickly turning Thailand into our favourite country of the trip.
While we scoped Patpong out for the items on our shopping list, Jeff went into a shell. I think he had been scarred from the last time we were here, but I didn’t let them bother me. I just ignored them even when I clearly aggravated them for some inexplicable reason. It really doesn’t take much to ruin their day though. You touch something the wrong way, or unfold one too many of their shirts and they’ll have something to say about it.
We didn’t end up buying anything. We weren’t sure whether the ear phones Mr. Valdivia wanted would be compatible with his tv at home. He asked for wireless headphones to use while watching TV. It turns out the only wireless headphones available there were Bluetooth enabled which also requires the TV to have Bluetooth. We were unsure whether the TV at home had Bluetooth so we had to pass on buying them today.
We ended up having some awesome Pad Thais on the street for dinner. Each were $1 and so good! One of the ladies helping at the street food stand was so kind to us. She got up to let us sit down. She brought us tissues, smiled at us. She ended up cooking up some chicken and rice for a stray dog that comes by the stall every night at the same time. She was another surprising example of kindness we hadn't seen much of in Bangkok. But as our travels have made clear, there is good and bad everywhere. It's important to focus on the good.
We headed back to our hotel after this. We were pretty upset when we realized we lost the wifi slip which meant we would go the rest of the night without internet. We didn't do much and seeing on how we were both exhausted, we pretty much just went to bed.
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