Yesterday was planned for Ayutthaya- back in like February. But at some point we realized we were never making it out of the city without a plane and we've ruins in our future anyway. So we decided to just bang about randomly, which is what we would wind up doing if we supposedly had a plan anyway. There was a hotel river shuttle to a mall called River City, so we took off on that after an embarrassingly huge breakfast at the hotel buffet this morning. Not as crazy as Trader Vic's but certainly not slacking- it had areas of pastries, English, Japanese and American style cold and already cooked breakfast foods, then outdoor cooking stations for both eastern and western cultures. But enough gluttony. We were down for crass commercialization today instead. But when we got to River City, it was a dead mall. Granted, it was pretty early in the morning and also off-season (I'd compare June here to February in the US) but it had the look of one of those tourist kind of malls no one would ever dream of going to in San Francisco. So I walked out the other side and hailed a cab to the Jim Thompson store in downtown. Jim Thompson is a westerner who just about singlehandedly revived the Thai silk industry before wandering off into the jungle one day to become a bit of a legend. But try as we might, we didn't buy anything. That's when we realized it really had been like four or more hours since breakfast and we were dehydrated. So we asked one of the ladies at the counter for a recomendation. The problem with that is not that the Thai people aren't willing to help. Oh no, that would be the very antithesis of Thai culture. And it's not that she might have been sending us to a place that gives kickbacks, because we don't care that much as long as it's decent. It's that my ear for the Thai accent on English is absolute and complete crap. It's hard enough being stranger in a strange land and obnoxious enough to expect everyone to speak my language in their country, but we're much closer to Australia than the US, so even when the English word is familiar it might not be. Throw in Thai names and my tinnitis, and I've got about the same chance understanding everything as I do in picking the right horse in the Preakness. So she told us to go to "Rmrfdrhrfingfrmfl" and that it was right out the back and then head left and then ask for it by name. Ha. So we wandered out the back to see what would happen. What happened was we walked onto the set of Bladerunner. Seriously. I looked up to see if there were any ads on the zeppelins, but the skytrain rails blocked the view.
We were in a wide alley-ish sort of area crammed with tables and parked vehicles, people and street vendors selling cooked foods of every variety except identifiable. Well not entirely. We did recognize a roast chicken from its head- cockscomb still in place, and a bunch of roasting eel on a grill impaled on sticks. Of all the (cooked) street food, for some reason, the meatballs make me most uneasy. Something just tells my body when I pass that those things are an ambulance ride on a stick. Maybe it's that you can't identify the meat- could be pork, could be poultry, could be fish. They're always some random light meat and just look kind of sickly. Anyway, we didn't see anything that resembled the name the lady had told us, kindly repeating it for me like three times when I asked. So we walked on until I noticed a random mall. This one was a real mall, and right off the skytrain station, so we wandered in. The first thing we were hit with was a kiosk for Auntie Anne's pretzels. Haaa! No. But we bought bottles of water for 10 baht and life was good. We wandered the mall for quite a bit trying to get our bearings. What I love most about other countries is when you have a nice parallel to your own culture: malls and grocery stores are probably my favorites for that. We wound up having a snack at a little sit down place- I'd venture it was a Thai version of a McDonalds or maybe Panera. It was a teppan yaki place. We ordered entirely by smiling and pointing at the menu. The waitress smiled back and nodded. Welcome to real Bangkok, we finally found someone who spoke zero English.
After that, we wandered the streets some more and wound up at a mall that had some sort of science focus. Maybe there was a museum somewhere but we never saw it. We did see a temple though- big surprise, you can't go ten blocks without passing one. But as I had a cute tank top on today, we nixxed any temples- they require having the shoulders covered at very least. Instead, we headed for the mall I'd had my eye on- the Siam Paragon. I knew enough about it to know there were crazy things you could buy inside, like Lotus, Ferrari and Lamborghini, high end stereo equipment that had Tony whispering their names with reverence and insanity of all sorts. We had taken the subway and skytrain to get there, which was in itself an adventure, and by the time we got there we were ready for another nosh. So we started on the bottom floor- well, next to the bottom floor. The lowest level housed a full-on aquarium- as in Monterey Bay, not as in fish tank. We thought about it and then passed to check out the food court. It went on extensively, father than we could quite figure out. After circling until our brains froze, we stopped at a bread place to get some rolls. Which is rather understating it. I got a Tom Yum Ghai Naan. Oh my! Chicken, Tom Yum spices and a chewy naan. I was in heaven and would have gotten some more except it was so incendiary that I didn't think my stomach could take much more of it- if it hadn't been wrapped in naan dough, I would never have been able to finish it, it was so spicy. Quite addicting though, I may try to figure out how to replicate that at home. Tony also had one, and so we decided some gelato was in order next just to cool down. Tony ordered some mangosteen sorbet which thrilled him to no end. It is mangosteen heaven here, and the old Danger joke just keeps rolling. After that, we started winding up the eight or so floors to get to our final destination- the Nokia theaters at the top of the mall. It was almost six by the time we got there and we were bushed. The noise and semi-darkness and other insanity almost drove us right back down again. But we really wanted to see a movie and were torn between the ginormous IMAX and the Nokia Ultra Screens. We'd planned for Transformers, but were evidently a day early. Instead Night at The Museum 2 was playing in the IMAX. For some reason that kind of did us in. We checked out the Ultras but have already seen 2 of the 3 films, and the third was so close to start time only single seats were left. So we gave up and headed for skytrain just in time for the tail end of evening rush hour. Joy! I haven't had so much fun in a mass transit car since hitting the London Underground in rush hour. Tony pointed out we should just be glad there were no pushers to get everybody in. The crowd wasn't so bad, but we were near the door and the delays to get everyone in also pushed massive amounts of hot air on us. We were so tired by the time we got back to the river and our hotel, that I picked up the phone and called the spa for a massage. I really should have saved that for another time, because it was crazy in and of itself. Who knew there was a three story building hiding on the grounds just for massage. Headdesk. This place just keeps going and going.
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