Bangkok Has Him Now

Weekend of November 9-11

 View from Skybar

Anyway on Friday, we decided to go into Bangkok – Laura had some friends visiting from the states and she wanted to take them to Firehouse, a really good hamburger place. After not eating hamburgers (or much “western” food in general) for the past 3.5 weeks, I was happy to go again. And it was once again delicious. After dinner, we went to a bar called Cheap Charlie’s. Cheap Charlie’s is basically an outdoor bar in the alley that a lot of tourists and ex-pats go to. They are popular for their relatively cheap drinks (70 baht). The bar itself is covered with a random assortment of stuff – wooden things, old toys, and much much more. Next time I go, I need to remember to take a picture.

 Firehouse Hamburger. mmmm...

After Cheap Charlie’s closed, we decided to go to “Soi Cowboy”. This is a, *ahem*, red-light district in Bangkok, but on the “classy” end of things. The first thing you notice when you arrive is the crazy amounts of neon lights – it’s practically blinding. The second thing you notice is the scantily clad women outside the various bars, enticing the people walking by to come inside and order drinks (...and possibly more). After walking up and down the street, we decided to hunker down at a sports bar patio and people watch. And you definitely see all sorts on Soi Cowboy. The street is mostly frequented by tourists and ex-pats – we heard that Thais in general aren’t allowed into these places. Although things having to do with the sex-industry, from stripping to prostitution, is illegal, police will generally look the other way. In all, it was a very surreal experience, helped by the neon lights.

On Saturday, I went into Bangkok to visit my friend Karima, who is teaching in the city. That means I had to take the bus into the city by myself for the first time. I went to the bus station, and hopped on the number 6. I asked the driver and attendant if it went to the bts/sky train and they said it did. I had no idea where to get off, so I hoped they would let me know. I knew the bus passed under the bts tracks at one point, so if I got to that point, I would just get off and double back. Fortunately, when the bus arrived to the BTS stop, the driver and attendant both said “Farang! Farang!” and motioned for me to get off (and it was the right stop). So I was very thankful for that. 

I met Karima at the Sala Daeng BTS station. First we wandered around in search of food – we settled on frozen bubble tea and fried noodles at a street restaurant. Both were very tasty. We also wandered into the mall in the area: it was very big and fancy looking, and had many of the same stores as back home. Also, the malls have started putting up Christmas decorations (Christmas isn’t officially celebrated in Thailand, but people will have parties and things). We walked around Lumphini Park, the biggest greens space in Bangkok. It was nice to see some trees and grass. There was also a man-made lake. We saw some cool birds and this one HUGE lizard. You see small geckos all over the place, but this one must have been 30-40cm long. I managed to take a picture of it before it disappeared into the bushes. 

After the park, we took the BTS to Karima’s neighbourhood. We stopped first at Chattuchak market, were I bought a pair of pants I’m going to attempt to turn into a skirt, and a pair of sandals. We then took the bus to the mall near Karima – I managed to break my camera already so I needed to buy another one. I am smrt. While we were there, we had Dairy Queen dipped cones, and dinner in the food court. We also stopped in the Tesco and bought a bottle of Thai mystery alcohol. Once we arrived at Karima’s apartment, we had drinks on her roof (there’s like a patio and a gym up there). It was very nice up there: a perfect place for drinking and talking. 

We eventually left for the Lebua hotel’s “sky bar” restaurant. If you have seen Hangover 2, this is the bar they filmed part of that movie at. We had to dress up to get in: no flip-flops, shorts, and what not. We arrived at the hotel and were herded onto the elevator. We got off on the 64^th floor, and made our way to the bar. The view was amazing – you could see the entire city. The bar itself was super fancy, drinks were about 13-15$ (hence us drinking before we arrived). Fortunately, there was no cover and no one forced us to buy drinks. While there, we also met up with a few friends of mine from orientation who were visiting Bangkok.

 More of the view from Skybar

Although the view was gorgeous, we didn’t stay for too long. We didn’t know where to go next, so we took a random tuk-tuk to this bar that I think the driver is paid to drive people to. This was my first time in a tuk-tuk, so it was pretty fun. When you stopped thinking “I am going to die”... But we arrived safely, but decided we didn’t want to pay cover at the bar. After a bit of walking, we went into a McDonalds and had more ice cream. Good times. From there, we went our separate ways. In our taxi ride back, we tried to speak Thai to our taxi driver, who laughed at us a lot. 

Sunday, we went to Chattuchak pretty early (after a breakfast of French toast. Mmm...). It was great going early because it wasn’t so ridiculously crowded. Karima continued her search for shoes, and I bought a blouse for school. We found a place that made Indian food, and had chicken masala naan wraps for lunch. It was awesome to have Indian food – although Thai food is v tasty, every so often it’s nice to eat something different. I headed home, I took a lovely 2 hour nap. 

In the evening, Erin, Thomas, Anna and myself went into Bangkok AGAIN to see the new James Bond movie (skyfall) in IMAX. There is an IMAX theatre in the Siam Paragon mall: the Paragon is super fancy and the 2^nd biggest in SE Asia, I believe. They had a lambourgini store in the mall. Crazy... The movie was entertaining enough, and it was my first trip to the theatre in Thailand. The movie was in English with Thai subtitles – most of the people in the theatre were farangs anyway.

Now it’s back to work!

PS I watched the Hangover  2 last night (Monday), as it is set in Bangkok. It was cool to see the hotel we were at on screen. Other than that, it was not a very accurate portrayal (big surprise). From the level of English, to the accents, to the monks... But it was still entertaining.