Thursday, March 12, 2009--Bangkok

Thursday, March 12, 2009--Bangkok

Today we had the entire day in Bangkok--so many possibilities! So, what did we do first--well, if you have been following the blog, you can probably guess the answer: We ate!!!

We went to a coffee shop that Julian used to visit when he lived here in Bangkok so that he could get some Western food and coffee. I had some Thai-style congee (rice soup) with fish and a coffee. The congee was not bad, although it could have used a dash of soy sauce.

After breakfast, we walked over to Lumphini Park. This is a huge park right in the heart of Bangkok. It is quite a beautiful place and the ponds have lots of Kimodo Dragons in them. Joe commented how green everything is--but it is almost always green here. We walked around for quite a while and took pictures of all of the beautiful plants. You can see some samples here:

After Lumphini, we walked over to Silom Mall to look for a few things. On the way, Wit stopped in to visit some friends, then took us to a street vendor for some delicious food. You can see some pictures here:

After that, Joe, Julian, and I went across the street from the hotel to get a Thai foot massage. The massage was quite good and very relaxing. And incredibly inexpensive! The total for each of us, even with a 100% tip, was the equivalent of $15 US. And the massage lasted an hour!!!

When we were finished with the massage, we walked around the area looking for some artwork for Julian (but were unsuccessful in finding anything). In one little shopping area, Don spied some white goldfish (kind of contradictory, eh?). They were huge and pretty cool looking. By this time, it was getting very warm outside, so we stopped and got something to eat and drink at McDonald's. Yuck!! Ugh!! Never again!

While Julian went off to do some errands, Joe and I took the Skytrain back to Paragon Mall, specifically to look for the right kind of tea to make Thai iced tea. After a very helpful young lady helped us, we think we found the right kind of tea. We will give it a try when we get back to Pattaya.

We returned to the hotel to shower and relax a bit before heading to dinner around 6 p.m. We went to dinner at a place called Nara, which is near Central World (another shopping mall). The food was excellent and we very much enjoyed it. We didn't take any pictures (we didn't take the camera along since this was a little bit nicer place), but we had a number of different dishes--soft shell crab in a wonderful sauce, kang phed ped yang (a red curry dish), tapioca balls stuffed with minced pork and peanuts, some sesame fried pork with panko breading, and fried rice with shrimp paste, lime, chiles, and shallots.

After dinner, we walked around Central World a bit until they started to close around 10 p.m. Then we took the Skytrain back to Sala Deng station (near the hotel) and wandered along the streets. As we got close to the hotel, we ran into a surprise visitor, who you can see here:

And now for our first contest! The first person to correctly guess which legs go with which person (Don, Joe, Wit, Julian) wins....well, something! We'll figure that out later! There are a couple of hints scattered throughout today's blog.

Tomorrow: A final morning in Bangkok and then the drive back to Pattaya.