Bangkok Top Ten

Last Weekend Gemma, Moritz and I [i.e. three-fourths of Flat 42E] jet-set (well, Air Asia set) to Bangkok for a February weekend of fun! We forwent the opening and return of Pontoon (I know, what was I thinking?) for cheap street food, air-conditioned movie theatres, and shopping, and it was well worth it!

In list update, here is Bangkok's Top 10 Weekend Highlights:

1. We overpay the taxi from the airport to our cheap hostel by 100 baht. We were the clichéd dumb tourists calculating currency exchanges (33 baht to the dollar, which we for some reason couldn't figure out) when the guy peeled off. We proceed to make up our loss by eating cheap street food for the rest of the weekend.

2. After finding a slit between the air conditioning vent we blast to air to the musty room, where Moritz can hide his passport and Laos cash, the three of us dump our bags on the bed and head off in search of street pad thai and noodles! We discover, the giant white alien woman.  Hours later we find ourselves cracking up, standing up for respect, honoring the King of Thailand as a cheesy promo plays in the air-conditioned movie theatre of Siam Paragon[NOTE: I tried to YouTube this video for your own personal enjoyment, and couldn't find it...]. A million trailers later, we don our 3-D glasses and consider ourselves to be the last people on Earth to catch Avatar on the big screen.

3. Saturday morning Moritz and Gemma make me get up early (they weren't aware this was a vacation) so we can spend the day sweating and walking around the city. We take the public bus (only 7 baht!) to the Khosan area to the West of the city. Khosan is the sketchy, cheap and dirty backpacker area featured in movies like The Beach (according to Tim).  Truth is, it isn't so sketchy at 8am. We pass a bunch of perfectly respectable places serving "American Breakfasts" and opt for pad thai for breakfast from noodle cart lady instead. All fears of stomach problems have virtually gone out the window.

4. Moritz doesn't get a tattoo (well, al the stores were all closed anyways) and we find a tuk tuk that takes us for a ride....Or ON a ride I should say.  We fall into another tourist trap... for 5 baht each, we are taken all over the city... the jewelry store, the indian tailor shop, the asian souveniers shop, where the tuk tuk driver collects what he claims are free gas cards,  if we just "pretend" to shop for 5 minutes in each store. We should have walked. The pier to take the express boats down the canal was literally 10 minutes walking distance from where we were originally.

5. We take a boat down the canal to ChinaTown! For hours we get lost in the market... finding alleys, fruit stalls, eating and sampling tons of fried goodies (my favorite was the corn) and sweating buckets. Coffee breaks are a must and Gemma mistakenly orders black Thai coffee, or a cup of sugar maybe with some ground coffee beans.

6. By noon we are exhausted and find a small MBK mall with a bunch of Indian stuff. We listen to bollywood-like Indian music while sipping Lime freezes and recouperating from the heat. An hour later we are dawdling down little India (more market stalls) and on our way across a foot-bridge I discover the most brilliant random street-poster EVER:

7. We walk for what seems like hours out of Chinatown until we find a bus that will take us to Soi (street) 11, where I'm due at the much-recommended Cheap Charlie's random driftwood-like bar. Problem is, we find the wrong Soi 11. A lot of walking, and short tempers later, we get a tuk tuk to take us to the real Soi 11 (opposite end of the city) and we find that Cheap Charlie's does exist, much to our relief. Rounds of Gin and tonics pick us up again, thanks to Tim. We order Naan bread next door and it serves as our cheap tapas.

8. We then take the BTS (kinda like a much-better, much cleaner, much faster version of the Chicago EL) back to the mall area where we are staying at and stumble into a fast-food noodle place, where (as I'm virtually sick of noodles and fried food by this point) I order fresh spring rolls and top it off with an ice cream crepe for dessert. On the way back to the hostel we lose Moritz to shopping (for the record, he claimed he was NOT going to shop at all), and Gemma and I discover some sweet graphic tees for less than 5 dollars apiece.

9. Moritz departs for Laos bright and early the next morning, and Gemma and I gleefully make our way to the Chatuchak Weekend Market where much to our delight, young Thai designers display the latest fashion trends in clothes and jewelry. My wallet breathes a sigh of relief as it lightens up to a coffee frapp and earrings, bracelets, a shirt, and dress, and sweater... You get the point.
 Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok

10. By 1pm we cram our newly purchased goods into our backpacks and march straight to a taxi that will take us back to the airport, but not before grabbing one last bowl of street food TO-GO that we shove down our throats in the taxi. With enough baht left over, I purchase a small oreo-blizzard at the Dairy Queen and look at all the pretty Duty Free things I will not be buying: alcohol, ciggarettes, ridiculoulsy expensive make-up, rolled up rice twisty cookie things, and dried fruit. For some reason, the Bangkok International Airport is overflowing with dried-fruit.

As Gemma and I walk onto the plane, joining the overtly red and balding, beer-bellied tourists on their way to Cambodia, we consider our trip a success, acknowledging that for less than a few hundred dollars, one can jet-set to Bangkok, "the city of life"... or in my opinion, the noisy, crowded first-world of Southeast Asia.