Oh gosh. If I don’t make good my promise and finish journaling Days Two thru Four, I’ll never get down to writing about all the other happenings (IF you could call them that) in my life. Initially, I wanted to wait till all the photos from Daphne’s camera are in my hands, but I think we could make do with the re-sized ones. I really don’t have to be anal about it ‘cause after all what makes it to the net are just bite-sized versions of the originals, right? Right.
Come next morn, I found my friends were more far gone than I’d thought they’d be. Well actually come to think of it, Daphne, who was sleeping closest to the window – we’d forgotten to draw the curtains – was the first to awaken. But it was early, and you know how it’s like to be the first to wake up, right? No one else is awake! It’s not really nice to be the one to wake the rest. It is seems so loserly to go brush your teeth and stare into space ‘cause you can’t do anything else since your two other friends are still fast asleep. I know about such conundrums because for the rest of the trip, I seemed to always be the first to wake up. Which was a weird experience for me, because I never, ever, am the first to rise when traveling with my family. Maybe it was due precisely to the fact that it was my first trip alone. At the back of my mind, I always had this pressure to prove to my parents that yes, Julia is old enough to take care of herself. She can go on overseas trips on her own without mucking up.
Throughout the trip, I kept uttering irritating lines as “Who has the hotel room keys?” while double-checking to make sure the hotel room door was locked; “Be careful of your things!” whenever we passed by a dark/crowded street; periodically reminded my companions to “Drink more water”; and made sure we did not get ripped off by another cab driver again. As you can tell, a lot was at stake. By Day Four Ching was rolling her eyes at every such sentence. I don’t blame her.
Oh but all this just distracts from my exhibitionist urge! Talking about being the first to wake up early was only meant to be a way to initiate another one of those photos I took. It was going to segue in, right after I talked about my friends being far gone and that weird feeling I got to be having to be waiting for them to freshen up and go down for breakfast, this wait giving me the time to take silly pictures of myself like the one below for no other reason than to entertain my blog readers for a tenth of a second:
But because I went off on a tangent, I couldn’t possibly do that anymore. Bummer. That’s okay, though, because I can still show you guys the pictures I took at the breakfast table, while waiting for Daf and Ching to get the food. It was really crowded – I’d picked the wrong time for us to wake up and go down, my bad again (although why I make it seem like it naturally is my responsibility to make decisions such as these elude me) – so one of us had to reserve a table by planting ourselves at one of them. Shenton Way customs don’t apply in Bangkok, although bags do, which was what a couple of men did at the table I thought was surprisingly unoccupied, but by then it was too late to change to another, so I just shamelessly uprooted a chair from one of the neighbouring tables and added it, very uncomfortably, in the space where our table ended and the next began.
These are the men I was speaking to you about:
Our hotel was rather old and a teeny-tiny bit creepy (though I didn’t tell my friends that), but it has some nice décor in the breakfast room, whatever you call it, nonetheless:
The croissant looked yummy, but in reality was heavy and not in the least flaky.
By the way, in the hotel lobby was a lounge that had cakes on display, for sale. Each day we saw the same forlorn pieces of baking sitting there not being eaten, and joked about how we should take pictures everyday, just to see if any were sold at all. We never did, but on the third day (I think) one of the cheesecakes looked noticeably skinnier, and on the following the cakes were cleared (correct me if I’m wrong, girls). Maybe whoever it was that bought the slices of cake threatened to sue?
Thanks to Dad, our hotel was located really conveniently. Everyday, all we had to do was walk down this little stretch of road, maybe a 5 minute walk, probably less, and we’d hit the main road, where we’d usually take the train or catch a cab (which we took a lot. Cabs are actually cheaper than trains in Bangkok!). While there were cabs and cab drivers heckling on the way out, somehow we (rather, I) was wary. For what reason I think you guys know as well. At night for some reason (grocery shopping at Foodland, a supermarket-cum-eatery near the main road; we walked home after dinner at a nearby hotel) or other we’d walk in too. There was only one time that the cab took us right to the hotel door. By day, that stretch of road is nice and bright and friendly.
At night, the street comes alive, with hookers, street meat stalls, fruit stalls, what-have-you. Smaller hotels dot the street all the way down, together with little shops offering long-distance calls home at dirt-cheap rates, internet connection, and so on. And did I mention the numerous massage parlors offering Traditional Thai massage (which we considered patronizing on our last night but in the end we were too broke to. And maybe we wanted to shop just that little bit more.)? Or hairdressing salons promising a good wave or two?
But we never did check out what exactly was on the fourth floor of our hotel…
Shopping. Shopping in Bangkok involves some degree of dexterity. If you thought the changing rooms in Far East are bad, you were wrong. Usually the places we went to were cramp and small, with no space to fit in a fitting room (no pun intended), so we had to make do with sarongs. Again, for your amusement, I illustrate:
The coolest thing we did that day, and I think the highlight of the trip for me, was to take one of the public buses. We’d just ran out of money shopping at Siam Square (yes, it can happen to you too), and so were on our way back to our hotel to refuel and recharge. But we had trouble getting a cab, and since we were already at a busstop, we asked a local which bus to take, and at the same time put the Thai we learnt to use: “Soi Ha. Soi Ha. Soi Ha.” (Translated, it means: “Street Five. Street Five. Street Five.”)
You can’t tell, but that day was swelteringly hot. That night, I noticed small red welts all over my neck. Over the next two days they morphed into pimples, and the skin on that area got really scaly and altogether very unpleasant to look at. Thankfully it didn’t irritate me much.
Bangkok has quite a few old-school theatres, screening movies that are, I heard, much cheaper than what we have over here (duh). I took down pics of some of the more interesting ones.
Did I mention we ate at Foodland that afternoon? The food’s really good for the price (S$3-5). On our last day we ate there again, and met this old Swedish guy who was really friendly (maybe a little too much). He’d been here every year for twenty-eight years, each time for a stretch of two months. Mostly to Pattaya for the summer sea breeze, so he says (Ching wondered aloud after what he meant by his “girlfriends”), but he has friends here as well so he drops by.
At Foodland, you order with the waiter, and you wait while they cook your food on the spot for you.
After you’ve eaten you slip the cash into this little green container where they have your order written on a slip of paper, and wait for someone to take it.
Your change gets returned on a small metal tray, whereupon you usually leave a small tip since the food was so dirt cheap and as a gesture that you enjoyed the food and so that the cooks will not send you off with a scowl.
Foodland was good, but this little Japanese restaurant served really nice food. Slightly more ex, though, with company of slightly more dubious backgrounds and agenda as well (local women with Japanese men. Go figure.). We went back again the following night, even though we made our next stop Chinatown.
Our last day was spent at Chatuchak Weekend Market, where the weather was sauna-hot. It was so hot it tested Ching’s patience - this being the girl who sleeps with her windows opened a silver and with the fan off. But they had everything but coffins there, so the sights and buys made up for it quite a bit, at least for me.
Us humans, with no fur, were already wilting in the heat. Imagine how the animals must’ve felt, sharing cramped quarters with twenty to a hundred others (there were Syrian hamsters, fur matted, packed so close they hardly had space to manoeuvre) for hours and hours on end. You wonder how many survive through the weekend. All kinds of creatures abound: from puppies and kittens to hedgehogs, stoats, squirrels and chipmunks, and even snakes. There were a lucky few which had the luxury of air-conditioning, though.
Chatuchak was huge. We got lost.
And in the end, the heat got the better of us (burnt a hole in my pocket!), and we headed back to the hotel earlier than we’d planned. Which was fine by us, because we were badly in need of a shower. But because we had checked out of our room earlier on, we could only bathe in the pool loos. At first we were worried the personnel wouldn’t allow us to, but luckily they were quite obliging and left us alone. Which was a good thing, too, because as things turned out the weather was bad and our flight was delayed some three hours. I was surprisingly okay about it, while Ching was surprisingly grumpy. To pass the time, we took pictures and gave each other massages. We changed three boarding gates, the last one at the farthest end of the airport. We’d been in the loo washing up, and so were one of the last to leave, so we rushed down to the boarding gate Amazing Race-style. That turned out to be completely unnecessary, because they were, once again, late to let us through, although this time it was a mere twenty minutes. The flight home was turbulence-filled (though everyone asked very politely what exactly it was that caused the long delay) but the view was rather breath-taking.
May I also mention, by way of conclusion, some of the more thought-provoking things I saw that is simultaneously current yet already talked to death?
At MBK, Bangkok’s Ngee Ann City. Our bags were searched. :
At the airport:
Come next morn, I found my friends were more far gone than I’d thought they’d be. Well actually come to think of it, Daphne, who was sleeping closest to the window – we’d forgotten to draw the curtains – was the first to awaken. But it was early, and you know how it’s like to be the first to wake up, right? No one else is awake! It’s not really nice to be the one to wake the rest. It is seems so loserly to go brush your teeth and stare into space ‘cause you can’t do anything else since your two other friends are still fast asleep. I know about such conundrums because for the rest of the trip, I seemed to always be the first to wake up. Which was a weird experience for me, because I never, ever, am the first to rise when traveling with my family. Maybe it was due precisely to the fact that it was my first trip alone. At the back of my mind, I always had this pressure to prove to my parents that yes, Julia is old enough to take care of herself. She can go on overseas trips on her own without mucking up.
Throughout the trip, I kept uttering irritating lines as “Who has the hotel room keys?” while double-checking to make sure the hotel room door was locked; “Be careful of your things!” whenever we passed by a dark/crowded street; periodically reminded my companions to “Drink more water”; and made sure we did not get ripped off by another cab driver again. As you can tell, a lot was at stake. By Day Four Ching was rolling her eyes at every such sentence. I don’t blame her.
Oh but all this just distracts from my exhibitionist urge! Talking about being the first to wake up early was only meant to be a way to initiate another one of those photos I took. It was going to segue in, right after I talked about my friends being far gone and that weird feeling I got to be having to be waiting for them to freshen up and go down for breakfast, this wait giving me the time to take silly pictures of myself like the one below for no other reason than to entertain my blog readers for a tenth of a second:
But because I went off on a tangent, I couldn’t possibly do that anymore. Bummer. That’s okay, though, because I can still show you guys the pictures I took at the breakfast table, while waiting for Daf and Ching to get the food. It was really crowded – I’d picked the wrong time for us to wake up and go down, my bad again (although why I make it seem like it naturally is my responsibility to make decisions such as these elude me) – so one of us had to reserve a table by planting ourselves at one of them. Shenton Way customs don’t apply in Bangkok, although bags do, which was what a couple of men did at the table I thought was surprisingly unoccupied, but by then it was too late to change to another, so I just shamelessly uprooted a chair from one of the neighbouring tables and added it, very uncomfortably, in the space where our table ended and the next began.
These are the men I was speaking to you about:
Our hotel was rather old and a teeny-tiny bit creepy (though I didn’t tell my friends that), but it has some nice décor in the breakfast room, whatever you call it, nonetheless:
The croissant looked yummy, but in reality was heavy and not in the least flaky.
By the way, in the hotel lobby was a lounge that had cakes on display, for sale. Each day we saw the same forlorn pieces of baking sitting there not being eaten, and joked about how we should take pictures everyday, just to see if any were sold at all. We never did, but on the third day (I think) one of the cheesecakes looked noticeably skinnier, and on the following the cakes were cleared (correct me if I’m wrong, girls). Maybe whoever it was that bought the slices of cake threatened to sue?
Thanks to Dad, our hotel was located really conveniently. Everyday, all we had to do was walk down this little stretch of road, maybe a 5 minute walk, probably less, and we’d hit the main road, where we’d usually take the train or catch a cab (which we took a lot. Cabs are actually cheaper than trains in Bangkok!). While there were cabs and cab drivers heckling on the way out, somehow we (rather, I) was wary. For what reason I think you guys know as well. At night for some reason (grocery shopping at Foodland, a supermarket-cum-eatery near the main road; we walked home after dinner at a nearby hotel) or other we’d walk in too. There was only one time that the cab took us right to the hotel door. By day, that stretch of road is nice and bright and friendly.
At night, the street comes alive, with hookers, street meat stalls, fruit stalls, what-have-you. Smaller hotels dot the street all the way down, together with little shops offering long-distance calls home at dirt-cheap rates, internet connection, and so on. And did I mention the numerous massage parlors offering Traditional Thai massage (which we considered patronizing on our last night but in the end we were too broke to. And maybe we wanted to shop just that little bit more.)? Or hairdressing salons promising a good wave or two?
But we never did check out what exactly was on the fourth floor of our hotel…
Shopping. Shopping in Bangkok involves some degree of dexterity. If you thought the changing rooms in Far East are bad, you were wrong. Usually the places we went to were cramp and small, with no space to fit in a fitting room (no pun intended), so we had to make do with sarongs. Again, for your amusement, I illustrate:
The coolest thing we did that day, and I think the highlight of the trip for me, was to take one of the public buses. We’d just ran out of money shopping at Siam Square (yes, it can happen to you too), and so were on our way back to our hotel to refuel and recharge. But we had trouble getting a cab, and since we were already at a busstop, we asked a local which bus to take, and at the same time put the Thai we learnt to use: “Soi Ha. Soi Ha. Soi Ha.” (Translated, it means: “Street Five. Street Five. Street Five.”)
You can’t tell, but that day was swelteringly hot. That night, I noticed small red welts all over my neck. Over the next two days they morphed into pimples, and the skin on that area got really scaly and altogether very unpleasant to look at. Thankfully it didn’t irritate me much.
Bangkok has quite a few old-school theatres, screening movies that are, I heard, much cheaper than what we have over here (duh). I took down pics of some of the more interesting ones.
Did I mention we ate at Foodland that afternoon? The food’s really good for the price (S$3-5). On our last day we ate there again, and met this old Swedish guy who was really friendly (maybe a little too much). He’d been here every year for twenty-eight years, each time for a stretch of two months. Mostly to Pattaya for the summer sea breeze, so he says (Ching wondered aloud after what he meant by his “girlfriends”), but he has friends here as well so he drops by.
At Foodland, you order with the waiter, and you wait while they cook your food on the spot for you.
After you’ve eaten you slip the cash into this little green container where they have your order written on a slip of paper, and wait for someone to take it.
Your change gets returned on a small metal tray, whereupon you usually leave a small tip since the food was so dirt cheap and as a gesture that you enjoyed the food and so that the cooks will not send you off with a scowl.
Foodland was good, but this little Japanese restaurant served really nice food. Slightly more ex, though, with company of slightly more dubious backgrounds and agenda as well (local women with Japanese men. Go figure.). We went back again the following night, even though we made our next stop Chinatown.
Our last day was spent at Chatuchak Weekend Market, where the weather was sauna-hot. It was so hot it tested Ching’s patience - this being the girl who sleeps with her windows opened a silver and with the fan off. But they had everything but coffins there, so the sights and buys made up for it quite a bit, at least for me.
Us humans, with no fur, were already wilting in the heat. Imagine how the animals must’ve felt, sharing cramped quarters with twenty to a hundred others (there were Syrian hamsters, fur matted, packed so close they hardly had space to manoeuvre) for hours and hours on end. You wonder how many survive through the weekend. All kinds of creatures abound: from puppies and kittens to hedgehogs, stoats, squirrels and chipmunks, and even snakes. There were a lucky few which had the luxury of air-conditioning, though.
Chatuchak was huge. We got lost.
And in the end, the heat got the better of us (burnt a hole in my pocket!), and we headed back to the hotel earlier than we’d planned. Which was fine by us, because we were badly in need of a shower. But because we had checked out of our room earlier on, we could only bathe in the pool loos. At first we were worried the personnel wouldn’t allow us to, but luckily they were quite obliging and left us alone. Which was a good thing, too, because as things turned out the weather was bad and our flight was delayed some three hours. I was surprisingly okay about it, while Ching was surprisingly grumpy. To pass the time, we took pictures and gave each other massages. We changed three boarding gates, the last one at the farthest end of the airport. We’d been in the loo washing up, and so were one of the last to leave, so we rushed down to the boarding gate Amazing Race-style. That turned out to be completely unnecessary, because they were, once again, late to let us through, although this time it was a mere twenty minutes. The flight home was turbulence-filled (though everyone asked very politely what exactly it was that caused the long delay) but the view was rather breath-taking.
May I also mention, by way of conclusion, some of the more thought-provoking things I saw that is simultaneously current yet already talked to death?
At MBK, Bangkok’s Ngee Ann City. Our bags were searched. :
At the airport:
2 comments:
:D v good summary of our trip! we really were shopping all the way.. but i do regret a lil' not gettin a chance to get a thai massage or manicure.. all my frens telling me i missed out on one of the best parts, juz like going to BurgerKing and not ordering Mushroom Swiss or your fave burger! err..haha..hope i make sense
haha yeah... i know what you mean. for me, it was the street meats. well! there's always next time!
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