Bangkok: Sept 28 - Oct 23 / Sept 22 - Sept 27 / Sept 11 - Sept 21 /

September 27 2009 - Eric: Don't miss Kyde's update below mine! Here is a of new video on another aspect that is the insanity of the malls here.



September 27 2009 - Kyde: Friday (09-25-09)! We heard about an international film festival passing through 2 cinemas in Bangkok. The first film to interest us was a documentary about Iran called "The Queen and I." The film maker was involved with the revolution which exiled the monarchy (kicked the king and queen to the Iranian curb) and was threatened with execution by the powers she helped put into place. She fled the country and landed in Sweden. Time brought her to question what had happened to the Queen. The movie shows how she wrote to the Queen and suggested an in depth interview to show what was going on with the Queen, now living in France. It's odd to see a woman go from being a Queen to being a commoner. The Queen is still very interesting and surprisingly personable. The movie was very good.

The theater we saw the movie in was pretty up scale (toparies = up scale, right?). There were actually tickets you could by which would get you a love seat to relax on with pillows and blankets to boot. I'm not sure if they cost more, but our tickets (for mega nice single reclining seats) were only $3 per person. our snacks (large drink to share and a medium popcorn) were about 4 dollars. So, for a total of $13 we got to see a good movie, in a grand theater and got snacks. I will never pay to see a movie in the states again! Here is a little video we made in the theater before our movie:



You may not believe this, but we managed to find another mall which we hadn't investigated yet. There is seriously a million malls here. I can't even figure out a way to express the approximate number of malls here. At this mall, we happened upon a proper fashion show. If you know me pretty well, I'm in love with top model! I was delighted (after I stopped being a jerk, sorry Eric) to see the show. I manned my station on the second floor to get a good seat. I was just sitting with my arms on the banister and a guy with a jumpsuit and a hat that stated "bomb detection" came up to me and Eric and motioned for us to move away from the banister. We stood there and the bomb guy talked to someone else over his walkie talkie. They ended up putting barricades between us and the banister. I was confused, but we headed over to another spot that turned out ot be better! We waited overall for about an hour and the show started! And 7 minutes later it was over! haha! Those 7 minutes were AWESOME though. I was so happy to see a real fashion show in person. I can't wait to see another one!



Then there was this awesome statue we have seen a few times. You eye ballin' me?



Continuing the international film festival, Saturday (09-26-09) we went to see a Austrailian claymation movie, Mary & Max. I guess that I expected claymation to mean little kids movie. This movie was AMAZING!!! Hard to describe, but I can manage. A little girl in Australian longs to have a a friend and she finds a phone book for New York. She writes to a slightly crazy 44 year old man there. There is a rooster, attempted suicide and a lot of chocolate. I demand if you ever have a chance to see this movie, DO IT!! At least watch the trailer if you have a second, MARY & MAX !

By the time we left the theater, it was 3 PM. We spent a bit of time trying to figure out where the Build-A-Bear was in the (yes, yet another) mall. This mall is called Central World and it is 2nd largest shopping mall in south east asia. We searched for a directory of the mall to figure out where we were, but it makes sense they would only invest in one area with a HUGE display of the malls layout, all 9 floors of it! The 9th floor is only the cinema, so it's really only 8 floors of shopping, but HOLY SHIT! It turned out there was not a Build-A-Bear in the mall we were at which was pretty disappointing, but it made it so we didn't end up with another friend whom we would have to figure out how to get home!

We both made friends with some Toys R Us giraffes!





After taking a little snooze on Eric's shoulder, I decided it was time to get my hair cut (calm down Debbie, it's not short!). I look through a couple books and came up with something. I managed to get a good service for my money, but I didn't get exactly what I wanted. I went in knowing that I could possibly get butchered because I have no idea how to tell them what I want, because they don't speak English. I had 3 different people work on my hair. The first lady washed my hair and I got a scalp massage. I sat down and lady 1 and 2 went at trying to comb my hair. There is a reason that I don't brush my hair very often, there's a lot of it and I'm not investing the time. I seriously had these two ladies just hacking away at my knots. I couldn't help but laugh. I should have made a movie! After the combing was done, lady 2 got to cutting my hair and she actually didn't use scissors. She had a razor blade on a handle. It was interesting. She chopped away for about 30 minutes and she gave me the layers that I was looking for. I actually wanted some long bangs, something that would still reach into my ponytail, but would be a little more framing on my face. That never happened and I knew what I had going was good and didn't want to mess it up. Eric came back just in time to see the lady hit me in the face with a wad of my own hair, it was pretty funny. Lady 2 and 3 then started the 45 minutes of dual blow drying. I realized why I don't do anything fancy with my hair or pay anyone to do this... it's kinda annoying and blow drying is hot! I left with 75% satisfaction and a lot less weight on my head. My hair though did make me look like I was a 14 year old going to homecoming. Never blow drying again!







Looked around the mall for something to eat, and came up empty on something that wasn't super overpriced. we headed outside to find better prices and value. We could hear girls screaming! We followed the sounds and found a room full of girls screaming at a screen with some boys on it. There was a girl around the age of 15 (can't tell the age of anyone here) and I asked her if she spoke English. I asked who the people on the tv were and she said something that might have been a band name, but I have no idea what it was. I ask if they were singers and she said yes. There were like 30 girls sitting on the floor in the room of a department store screaming at a tv screen. I seriously saw a girl wave at the screen, and I thought that was bizarre then I realized what I was looking at. It was all a little weird.

We turned the corner from this little girl get together and there was seriously a food festival! We jumped in and slowly made our way to the real food. We watched one vendor which was making coconut pudding. They have a heated metal plate with circular indentions. A guy goes by and in each little cup he puts in a pour of batter and then tops it off with some coconut milk. It cooks a few minutes and then the ladies put 12 of them in a box for you! The next stand had some chicken going, which I had no idea how they made it, but a girl helped us get some. It was really nice of her to work out our food situation! We ended up at a stand which a guy handed me some weird food. See the video, it's hard to explain in writing!



When we sat down, the girl who had helped us asked if we would like to sit with her. She was with her boyfriend and both of them could speak English, her a little more than him. We shared all the food we had, so we got to try their and ours. They had a rice pudding concoction with mango, which was delicious. Nothing we got to taste at the food festival was bad, everything was delicious! We walked around a bit more after getting some direction on how to get to a good weekend market from our buddies. While walking, Eric found a concoction of blended frozen strawberries with some yogurt on the bottom. Simple and great tasting! Mom, you may want to try that with your frozen treats, swirl a little yogurt in it before you freeze it!

Today we have spent the day at the apartment. I've had a pretty bad migraine and Eric and I managed to get a nap in during the afternoon. This has given me time to catch up on some interneting! I'm planning on watching Super Troops while I eat the amazing Ramen that I have here. It's SPICY SHRIMP. I'm totally addicted!!

September 24 2009 - Kyde: So, since my last update, we've spent a lot of time in the apartment! Sounds exciting, but really it wasn't! Thanks to the amazing mind of Tess, she figured out Eric had food poisoning from that burrito joint. During Eric's epic burrito bash, I got to go out into our neighborhood on my own for the first time. My first adventure out was pretty normal. I walked about half a mile to a store to get some gatorade and hit our favorite place to eat on our block for some rice on the way back. I haven't been alone in a good while. Probably not since I was sitting in Champ before I left. The second day of Eric's near death food poisoning, I went to a the larger store we have near us. I walked around for a while, and it actually hit me how alone I felt standing in a store with a million other people that I can't talk with. During this trip, I couldn't help but get frustrated with the way thais walk! Our guidebook explains that they will move into any open area, and I understand that. What bothers me is they aren't too keen on looking where they are walking or they try to take the harder path to move around you. Totally driving me crazy! That night, Eric got really bad. He started to run a fever and wasn't conversing very well with me. I got worried and charted out the route to the hospital. Then I thought about how difficult it was going to be to get him down the 3 flights of stairs in our building considering the walk to the bathroom was hard for him. I sat down with the computer and thank goodness Will had IMed Eric! We got to talking and he got to chatting with Tess and we managed to make a good game plan for the next 12 hours. We got Eric's fever in check in a few hours and I actually got to sleep a little that night! Thanks guys! When Eric was able to get up, we shared a storm together!





With my buddy almost back to normal, we decided to do something easy on our first day back to Bangkok! We went to the Zoo! To get to the zoo, you get on the Sky Train and take it to the boat ferry. The boats have different colored flags to tell you what they do. No flag, Orange, Yellow and Blue. We wanted to get a Yellow, because it was an express and it stopped where we wanted to go. We got on a boat that was blue and yellow, we figured it's got some yellow. Wrong choice, that turned out to be a tourist boat. While it goes down the river much slower than the other boats you get to listen of a loud speaker as someone tries their best to talk in English but doesn't quite. On top of that, it turned around before it got to our stop. Needless to say, we were baffled, but we managed to get off and hop on another boat which was full orange. Orange is the way to go... it's express (with a few more stops than yellow) and it's cheaper. We landed at our destination and right off the bat we saw something cool. Right off the pier there were millions of catfish!



The Dusit Zoo was pretty cruddy, but it was definitely a good time! We were there for about 4 hours and we only paid $3 bucks each to get in! Here are some pictures of our adventure! I got my first odd experience in a bathroom. The toilet was like 6 inches off the ground. There was no seat and there was only a holding area, no flushing. I totally hoovered and looked really confused while I tried to figure out hor to flush. There was also a bucket of water with a cup next to the toilet, which I pretty sure is used for ladies to wash themselves (I could be wrong). There is no toilet paper in there, but I realized later that you have to pay for that BEFORE you go in! I'm now paying attention before I go into the facilities!



I met Thailands' Fisticus!



Ugliest bird in the world, which we called "Jesse" for a bit!



Prehistoric Piggy Back!



A bird craped on me!



April, this might be how they came up with double sided paper!



This scary one-eyed deer kinda thing seriously got 3 feet from my face and decided it was time for a good ol' pee. It was pretty freaky!



Hippos don't like smoke!



This is how love works...



Asian Nubbins!



We stayed at the park til closing and realized that we had an hour to get back to the boats before last run! The area, Dusit, that we were in was pretty nice. There was large sidewalks with nice shady trees! There was also a police station with a guy holding a machine gun. Safety first! We managed to get on a boat and it was nice to get a night view of the river scape.

Thursday, I got to take my first motorcycle taxi! 20 baht and I got to freak out in my head. It was pretty cool! I'm pro-motorcycle taxi because it is cheaper than taxi, doesn't get stuck in traffic and provides an adrenline rush! My afternoon was spent at the Emporium, a really ritzy mall near our place. I got to check out Louis Viutton, Chanel, Prada, Gucci and many other designers. It was pretty cool, I've never had a chance to stare at such high priced, super designer stuff up close and personal before. I ended up leaving the mall with a 6 pack of donuts, a new book and some deodorant. I'm a big spender!

September 24 2009 - Eric: After a few days of being very very sick I finally felt well enough to go out yesterday. Here's some videos.

When you get off riverboats there are people selling all sorts of stuff at the peirs. Here is some of the odder things we have seen:



I promise this is the last video of the electical system I will make.



This is Rama V. Well, a statue of him. Anyways, locals come to give offerings to him in the evenings. Typically it's things like flowers and incense but according to our guide book sometimes people leave booze.



Here's a longer video that some may find boring. It's just a shot off our balcony as a storm came in. I sped it up quite a bit.



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