Anyhow! Going all around Bangkok cost a TON of baht (yes, now I’m thinking even cheaper than I do in the U.S., since I think in terms of baht, now!), but at least it equates to not too many dollars, and besides… it was well worth it, since I’m even more amazed by and in love with this city.
Towards the end of last week, we explored the Siam area (fancy shopping area, very metropolitan part of the city) and enjoyed a nice dinner at a fancy Chinese restaurant, followed by ice cream. The following night, after we had a program meeting with presentations, we went out with some of the Thai students to a 9-Baht-a-Bowl noodle place, which was uber GOOD, especially since we could try so many types of noodle soups, pressure each other into eating more, and not worry too much about the overall cost!
On the weekend, we braved the morning rains (it’s starting to be rainy season, here. Meaning, it rains/floods for an hour or more in the morning, then is pretty sunny but pleasantly cooler in the afternoon) and HUGE crowds to shop at Chatuchak Weekend Market, where there were TONs of vendours that sold EVERYthing! I went wild and crazy, here, since there were just SO many stores selling graphic tee-shirts, a fashion item that I particularly love to wear and have been severely disappointed by the LACK of variety of in the U.S.! Not to mention… all the cute shoes, street foods, ice creams…AH! Anyhow, there were SO many stalls, I don’t even think we covered half of the market grounds!
At night, even though we were exhausted from 4 hours of shopping, we went with some of the Thai graduate students to…. Our first Thai night club, MUSE!
This place was SO crowded with people, there was hardly any room to dance, but.. I guess that means that this place was just so popular, right?? What was really cool was that, although they had some familiar American Pop music playing, allowing us to scream the lyrics as if we were crazy American-College-Students-Gone-Wild (wait…. I guess we are… aren’t we…!), the majority of the music was actually played by a live band… BodySlam!!
BodySlam is actually one of the Thai bands that I put on my Playlist for this blog, before I came to Thailand and was searching high-and-low for Thai music! I was actually not really impressed by the one song I found on Playlist.com by BodySlam, and so started to give up on the quality of Thai music… but after hearing them actually play at MUSE and being surrounded by 20-something-year-old Thai people jumping up and down, ecstatically singing along with the band, I’m really enjoying their music, now!
Let’s just say that we had a fun time, staying at the club until 2 o’clock in the morning, and perhaps some people didn’t quite follow the advice that I found on the wall opposite of the bathroom mirrors :)
Today, although we were planning on being ULTRA-American by starting off Independence Day with a Continental Brunch at the next-door hotel (Pancakes and French Toast, oo!), we ended up waking up a little tooo late from the previous night’s activities, and so ended up having a Western-style LUNCH (club sandwiches and smoothies!), instead!
A pretty groggy lunch was followed by taking a couple buses to the Amulet Market, snacking on street food, fitting seven people into a taxi (the taxi driver was shocked, to say the least, and told us to pay 100 baht instead of even putting on the distance/rate-meter!) to Khao San Road (VERY touristy), cooling off with some beers at an Irish Pub that didn’t even serve Guinness (!!), then grabbing a bus to Siam to eat an AMERICAN dinner at Hard Rock Café….
Close to a 3,000 Baht later for the weekend? My wallet is hurting, but I figure that I’ve got to enjoy this City of Angels while I still can, to the fullest.
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