Everyday is an Adventure: Bangkok, Thailand: Part 1

It's about time I update this blog, don't you think?!?!

This year's October school break happened to fall during the same week as Marks' global meetings hosted by Hong Kong. This meant no week-long, island vacation for the kids and me. However, we were fortunate to have wonderful friends come over for a visit during that week! Actually, one of them was coming over for the work meetings and his wife came along. Andrea and I spent a lot of time relaxing tai-tai style in salons, restaurants, bars, and at the pool, while the guys were stuck in boring meetings all day!

However, I am a girl that enjoys vacations, so by November it was high-time to break out of Hong Kong for a bit. Mark and I decided to try a long weekend in Bangkok, Thailand. It just so happened that one of our very good friends from HK coincidentally had the same idea, so our weekend was double the fun!

On a different note: I have tried to get these pictures to download into the text as I discuss them. However, it is very difficult to manuever them around. If anyone is an experienced blogger via this website and has any great tips, I'm keen to hear them!!!

Overlooking Bangkok @ The Sky Bar

Above Eleven, Japanese-Peruvian fusion food and drinks.

The Sky Bar

We began our adventure Friday night with a Japanese-Peruvian dinner at Above Eleven roof-top restaurant located on Sukhumvit Soi 11, a world-famous party area of Bangkok. We enjoyed fantastic views of the city nightskape as we were 32 stories above street level! In the spirit of keeping this blog mostly "G" rated there is nothing else left to report on this night!

Saturday we ventured to the Chatuchak Weekend Market for some serious shopping and cultural experiences! This particular market is touted as being the largest, open-air market in the world. I had to do a little internet research here: the market is over 14 hectares and hosts around 200,000 people plus per day. For the hectacre challenged, 14 hectacres is approximately 37 acres! There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 9,ooo-15,000 stalls for your shopping pleasure. Keep in mind, that Bangkok is around 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity at this time of year. That's a lot of stalls, people, and smells crammed into a very hot and humid space! I was a bit skeptical about dragging Mark to a place this size when a visit Easton Towne Center causes distress, but our friends were sink-shopping, so Mark had no choice but go and suffer along with Chris...more on the sink in a bit!

Mark and I were scouring the stores for a traditional Thailand wood carving for ourselves and trinkets for the kids. Going to the market with a goal in mind helps with the organization. The market is divided into "districts" such a animals, furniture, clothing, soaps, clay, etc. We wondered around aimlessly for a bit until we discovered the areas we needed. After a while of negotiations, our friends had bought a beautiful mosiac sink and we had purchased our wood carvings. I forgot to mention that we had a driver and van arranged to transport us to and from the hotel, along with our packages. My girlfriend and I decided to have a drink and snack while the guys carried the stuff to the van. One hour later, we still have not had any sightings of the guys, when alas they surface laughing hysterically. Super long story short, at one point when trying to locate the van, a police office driving a moped called our van driver to clarify the location of the parking lot. At this point, the officer offered to bring our friend to the van. Chris hoped on, holding the sink, when the officer, then pointed at Mark and gestured for him to hop on as well. If you are keeping track, you are correct in the fact that there are now 3 grown men riding on a moped, holding a rather large ceramic/mosiac sink off to the side weaving through Bangkok traffic in serch of a van! Unfortunately we were no where around the guys to snap a picture of this! After we reunited and regrouped we headed to lunch at the market for some traditional Thai. We dined on: fish cakes (similar to crab cakes), a hollowed out pineapple stuffed with rice, chicken, and cashews, mango and sticky-rice, deep-fried spring rolls with sweet and spicy chili sauce, and Singha (Thai beer). All of the food was excellent! We then headed back to the hotel to wash-up for the night.

Following dinner at an Italian restaurant, Mark and I decided to head to The Sky Bar rooftop at Lebua State Tower, which is where The Hangover II was filmed. This bar is on the 63rd floor (or 820 feet in the air), making it the tallest open-air bar in the world (per the Sky Bar). Mark and I grabbed a table along the edge to enjoy the views and listen to the jazz band playing above us. The views were simply stunning. Not only was Bangkok city full of lights and life, but the ombiance of the bar with the uplight gold and cream pillars, perfectly manicured topiaries, jazz band, and the hustle and bustle of people dressed-up for a night on the town made for a very enjoyable night. After enjoying our two-drink minimum for the table, we walked up a few steps to the circular bar for pictures. Staff are readily available and offer to take pictures of guests, free of charge. Our staffer was superb and had us doing all sorts of poses and he worked very hard to capture as many views as he could!

We then taxid back to our hotel to rest up for our busy day of sightseeing on Sunday. Taxis in Bangkok, well I believe most of Thailand, are an interesting experience. There are meters in the cabs, however, it is up to the cab drivers discretion to use it. It is very important to negotiate your rate prior to getting in the cab or insist/refuse to ride in the cab without the meter running. Most hotel and bar/restaurant staff will help give you a ballpark of a reasonable cab fare. Saturday we had quite an interesting cab ride with our friends as we had negotiated our fare quite easily. The driver had problems finding our hotel so we had a nice little tour of Bangkok at night for a very reasonable price! Luckiily our driver was very nice and just laughed as he called himself a tour guide & driver in one!

I will be publishing the sightseeing from Sunday in Part 2 due to the number of pictures I hope to be able to post.