Day 2: Bangkok Culture

The word for the day is appetite. As in, I don’t think I have one. Its not the food. What food I’ve eaten has been fantastic. I really like the food. And, I like eating. Typically, I eat when I am hungry and stop eating when I am full. Well, the thing is that I am not hungry. A few people think that it’s the heat. Last night we had dinner with an old coworker of Joanna’s, who has been in Bangkok for over a year, and she said that she didn’t eat much at all for her first two months because it was so hot. Its weird, I’ve never not had an appetite.

Anyway, yesterday we started off the day with a trip on the skytrain (a light rail system), to Siam Square for some shopping. The sky train is new, nice and most importantly fast. It took us about 15 minutes in air conditioning to get to the square. Before the sky train, a taxi would have taken about ½ hour to 45 minutes and we can’t be sure that it would be air conditioned. It dropped us off in the center of Siam Square, the center of Bangkok commerce.

The square is full of teenagers and 20-something buying the latest fashions, latest cell phone gadets or cheap jewelry. It’s organized in 7-10 small blocks. Each block has a new sound system or tv screen blaring the latest in western pop-culture music or music videos. We spent most of the day walking around the shops and even bought some stuff. We also found a place to get Japanese Facials (including facial massage), it was about $10 for each. After the massages, we checked out MBK, Bangkok’s largest shopping mall. It was huge and had a nicer selection of clothes and accessories.

In the middle of our shopping extravaganza, we checked out the Jim Thompson house. Jim Thompson worked for the CIA and then got involved in the silk trade. He had studied architecture and built a fantastic, traditional Thai home with some Western twists. The tour was nice and the house was really interesting. The best part was that it gave us ideas for traditional Thai items to purchase that might fit into our place.

After a short break, we headed to dinner with Joanna’s old co-worker. The dinner was outdoors and there was a ton of sea food. But, as I mentioned above, I didn’t eat anything because I haven’t been too hungry.

After dinner, we met our friends Ryan and Lisa out at a bar in the Pad Pong area. This are includes a Night Bizarre and the famous sex bars. We started off at a bar called Reillys, an Irish pub with live music and good drink specials. The liver entertainment involved a guy with a guitar singing American classics (including a lot of Neil Diamond), reading lyrics from a laptop. It was like this guy’s karaoke dream come true.

After a couple drinks we headed out into the Bizarre and walked through the Pad Pong area. It was very…enlightening.

More later.