Long Live the King!

Today is Monday, and the King was born on Monday, so everyone wears yellow shirts that say Love live the king to pay respect. Lately, the king wore a pink shirt, and now they are making them in Pink as well, although they are not as popular. When we got off the subway, there was a sea of yellow shirts coming down the stairs, it was priceless. Mikae forgot the camera.

Today we went to MBK again, Mikae to get his hair cut at Toni & Guy, and some sweat rags. Me, to get a Thai massage. Haircut was expensive, $30. Thai massage was 300 baht. (or $9) for an hour. Basically, a small this woman crawled all over me and stretched me out using her hands and feet. Believe it or not, a very relaxing experience. New MBK find, is the 5th floor food ticket food court. There is a fancy one that looks fancy and uses a card system.. bypass that. Go up one more escalator from the fancy food court area and you come across a larger, busier food cart that you have to purchase tickets for. We had two separate mini meals here, and four bottles of water for $300baht. Or ($9) One Muslim Curry meal that I couldn't eat, 2 curries, rice, naan and 2 samosa (I was feeling slightly ill this afternoon) and one vegetarian takeaway with bamboo shoots, rice and Textured vegetable protein. She said it was spicy, and was not kidding. Delicious. I also splurged on some really nice high quality sandals that were half price at 1020 baht, and bought a 199baht clearly fake Chanel bag to tout my things in.

We had to purchase some more toiletries from Boots, and some antacid (spicy, spicy). I wanted some serious 50+ SPF facial sunscreen. It took us 15 min, and a trip from Watson's to Boots to find one without whitening cream. Being white is the big thing here, there is an entire isle of whitening creams in the pharmacies, and treatments at the spas. All of the models in their advertisements, and actors in commercials are very light skinned. Most look if not only ½ Asian maybe 1/3 only.

As for the language barrier. Most people know a few words in English, people say Excuse me and Sorry all the time if they bump into me, and Thank You when we hold doors etc. People at stores and restaurants usually know the basics. Menus everywhere have photos, if not a photo with the English translation. You simply point at what you want, and they read the Thai characters. Even at McDonald's, the girl pulled out a laminated card and asked us to point to what we want. We did have a cab driver who couldn't speak English OR read Thai (we gave him our card from the hotel that has directions in Thai.) He knew the following in English however. “I can't Speak English” “Straight” and “Left.” So with hand gestures, and a in unison Hooray!! we made it to our hotel safely. Often, the taxi and tuk tuk drivers are from rural farming areas of thailand, sent to the big city to make some money for the family. They have their own style of music, kind of like Thai country, that talks about the move to the bug city and water buffalo and stuff, its wild.

Tomorrow I want to do some tourist stuff. We haven't done any tourist stuff in Bangkok yet, and I want to see some temples and such. Should be interesting. We also need to plan our next hotel, as it is almost time to check out. We are thinking either China Town, or potentially a unit move North to Chang Mai or South to Ko Lanta. I have a book to finish, and sell asap. To all of you in Canada, Enjoy your Day.

PS. In Bangkok it is fashionable to be “Hi-So” meaning High Society. In this case you would have a chauffeur. Bangkok is amazing.