Wow. Bangkok is so busy. We got off the sleeper bus all groggy and caught a bus for 7 Baht each to Kaosan road in the central city. The Tuk Tuk and Taxis wanted to charge us 100 - 150 Baht each. Hmmmm seems to be the same in every big city in SE Asia.
All the Hotels appeared to be fully booked out when we arrived at 7 am in the morning! But we did manage to find a nice place called Mary V Inn for 6 $ US per night. I bought breakfast from one of the many side of the road food stalls - Pad Thai Chicken, and fresh pineapple / mango pieces. All for 1.50 US dollar!
We saw some great local markets. One had over 15000 separate stalls, stocking just about everything - apart from Elephants and Jumbo Jets. I think they are currently setting up another one so they can stock these too.
Then we took a sky train and stopped at Siam station, and checked out their latest space station type shopping malls. Pretty big. They stocked Ferraris and Mazeratis, Versace, etc etc... you know, all the stuff you will never be able to afford. It was fun anyway.
Later on, we had dinner with Heidi and Chris, and sadly saw the last of them for this SE Asia leg of our trip. We are thinking of making a slight detour up to Alaska to go visit them later this year.
The day we ended up taking a BS Tuk Tuk drive to see the local sites for 20 Baht. Although we had been warned we still went and regretted it. He he he. We went to a couple of jewellery stores and a couple of tailor suit stores. Needless to say that we bought nothing... but the driver made his commission and wasted our time in the process. In payment for our patience we saw a couple of rickety old buddhist temples that we closed!!! Hah! Then he dropped us somewhere 4 km from our hotel and wanted to know if we would like to walk. Duh! Then whilst walking back to our hotel a couple of official looking tough guys asked us to remove our sunglasses, park ourselves off the footpath and hold our hands by our sides. They had guns and asked nicely so I guess I felt compelled to agree. 10 minutes of waiting like this, the King of Thailand rolls through with his procession of BMW, Mercedes cop cars - heaps of them. Then I understood why we were waiting like dweebs with our hands by our sides on the side of the road. They REALLY love the king here, you have no idea. Its a crime to stand on a dollar bill because his face is on it.
