It was downright chilly as well left Chiang Mai in the wee hours to hop a plane to Bangkok. Now we had the opportunity to do all of the sights that we missed in the first day!
The blast of hot, humid air reminded us that we were tired of traveling and (I'm going to regret this in a few days) tired of being sweaty.
We dropped our bags at our hostel, then headed to Khao San Road (a tourist paradise and den of "tour guides" and "helpful" bystanders trying to sell you something) for one of our last meals. It was pad thai (of course) and a banana shake (of course) but it was at an Irish pub with two guys already passed out and what might have been their escort slowly pouring more beer into her mouth with two hands on the glass.
So, with our role models sleeping on a table at 11:30 in the morning, it was time to decide what to do. Open the guidebook... And immediately become lazy and apathetic.
Jim Thompson's house was finally decided on, and I flagged down a taxi to take us the couple of miles. We get across the destination, then ask for the meter to get turned on.
And this is where we were thwarted. Not only did that taxi refuse (which resulted in us getting out of the cab while it was still rolling), but so did the next three. The "helpful" man on the corner told us to use a tuktuk, but I was not going to risk getting stuck in stinky, sweaty, smoggy traffic without air conditioning. My love of tuktuks has limits.
Another suggestion from the book was to go to movie. Multiple hours of sitting in air conditioning and no decisions? We were willing to negotiate with a taxi to get us to Siam Center, which had a cineplex.
The collection of malls around and including Siam Center was breath-taking. Five stories of boutique stores, each with their own storefronts and styles. I've seen some pretty tricked out malls in the Middle East, but at least one of those floors takes the cake for most detail I've seen in a mall.
There was also an orchid festival on display, so that was pretty as well.
We walked down hallways of brand name stores while at a comfortable room temperature. We found the massive movie theater in the connected second mall on the very top floor.
We attempted the kiosk to buy our tickets, but were thwarted when Alisa's card didn't have a chip in it. There were also a staggering number of theaters and price points (including VIP couches and 4D), but the next showing was just at a "regular" theater. Since we didn't really know where the assigned seats we were picking were, we just picked randomly on the middle.
We snacked on Mr. Donut and Starbucks for the 45 minute interlude in the air conditioning before taking our seats.
The entrance to the theater was a grand staircase that led up to the middle of the first floor of seats. Each side flanking the stairs was rough 2/3s the side of a U.S. theater (making just the first floor about double the width of a typical theater - if you include the stairs, and about 50-odd rows of seats).
The previews got underway as Alisa and I wrapped up in our scarfs cum blankets. Most had some amount of English, though we could only understand the English parts of the Bollywood-esque Thai movie that was about learning to speak English. At least, that's what we guessed it was about.
At the end of the previews, the recorded orchestra swelled and everyone rose as photos of the royal family were shown over children singing (a bit like this: http://youtu.be/jnxw9Q_F2gk). We don't do that in the U.S.
Clearly I'm writing this post a bit belatedly, but as I was telling this story, someone mentioned that the Hunger Games movie had been banned in Thailand because protestors had been using the unifying tune in their protests. Clearly it was completely banned - one of the cinema chains had pulled it from their theaters, and the three-finger salute from the movie was banned, which, while not as crazy as it being completely gone, is still pretty shocking.
We finished off our segment of incredibly Westernized things with Coldstone. No shame.
Using the mall's wifi, I planned our route back, which was going to have us take the Skytrain (which had a few more stations built on it than the 8-year-old guidebook had in it) to the river ("Chao Praya"), then a ferry up the river to near our hostel, and a couple block walk to our street.
It was evening at this point - the sun was setting, and it was rush hour. It is a good thing that that was the only train trip we took in Thailand - I think Alisa would've exploded if one more person didn't respect her personal space. We made it to the dock, and even managed to get on the right boat! The twenty minutes we waited on the platform reminded us of how much air conditioning helps your mood...
But, Wat Arun, which we didn't visit, was sparkling at night, as was Wat Kanlaya and many other riverfront buildings.
The most serendipitous thing for me was that our route home was through a pedestrian section just off the chaotic shopping road of Khao San. It was the perfect place to come back to later to get our dinner.
So, many hours after we originally "checked in" to the hostel, we get to go to our rooms. It was just two bunks, and one pair was (surprising to us because we incorrectly remembered reserving a female dorm) two guys from California. It was an hour of chatting (and teasing) before they headed out for dinner and we took showers. We had to leave at 4am to catch a cab, but also didn't want to get on a plane super gross. More relaxing in the A/C finally made us ready for our final meal in Thailand.
We went back to the pedestrian street, still bustling with masseuses, fish tanks for foot cleaning, shops, carts that were serving alcohol, and a myriad of other noises, food, and people. I picked the busiest restaurant and, for my meal, the pad thai. Alisa's chicken had some charcoal or something in it, but... They had banana shakes. I was happy.
We had been counting down our baht - I didn't really want to leave with a lot of money in our pockets, and I didn't want to have to go on a shopping spree at the airport. I had just checked the cash stash when I saw a woman peddling hammocks.
Rosie got a hammock when she was in Thailand, and I mentioned it to my sister when she was in China, but she didn't find one. I hadn't seen them but in one place, and now, fortuitously, right where we're having dinner, hours before we get on a plane to leave, there it is.
She came over and priced it at $20 (in baht). I was incredibly embarrassed at the amount the I could offer because we still had to pay for dinner with our reserves. But she took my offer of $7 in baht and Alisa's $3 in American! So, with pennies left (I had to root through the change to see if there was enough for mango sticky rice for dessert at a stall!), we returned to the hostel for our three-ish hours of sleep.
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