The next day I woke up with a hangover. I'm not going to lie, I crawled out of bed and if you could have seen me it was not a pretty site...Just be thankful I'm not one of those people that take photos of everything.
scraped myself down to get breakfast, can't remember what I had, but I'm thinking it was mainly fruit juice and coffee based...
Today was the first day to myself and I had plenty of choice as to what to do. One of the guys on the workshop had marked out the different places on a map for me and recommended different stuff what the kind of thing I was after. He also recommended the places not to go to!
Today I didn't feel up to full on sight seeing so being the technogeek consumer I am I thought I'd go to one of these technology mall places. I chose a place called Panthip Plaza. It's basically a couple of thousand computer and phone shop's / stalls rammed into a big 6 floor mall. Imagine Bluewater for geeks.
I got a cab over there (no I didn't go on a tuk tuk and have no plans to) and he dropped me somewhere near, I went for a stroll over the bridge and found the entrance to Panthip Plaza.
As you walk in it is quite a shock to the system, relatively organised chaos. People with every type of mobile phone you can imagine, I almost bought a Ferrari 599 shaped mobile phone but they wanted too much even after some extreme haggling so I left it. Now you don't come to a place like this unless you actually want to buy something, I had a bit of a shopping list planned out. I was looking for some kind of tablet, i'd seen reviews of what people call the fake ipads (epads or other variants) that although cheap chinese made things were running android 2.2 and not actually that bad. I also was looking for a few sony camera attachments.
I spent the next 3 hours wandering the mall, It flew by all of a sudden i realised it was lunch time and I'd not bought anything. I had already spotted a small stall on the 4th floor that had these epads. It's quite amusing really they make out like they are as good or better than ipads and give you the hard sell. I did well, about 20 minutes negotiating and some back and forth typing numbers into a calculator, stripping out of all the crappy accessories i didnt want and showing them that I had a dell streak in my pocket so I'm quite aware this is a chinese knockoff I managed to get them to sell me the 10" version for less than the 7" version, something like 2300 baht ie about £47. She didnt look particularly happy when we shook on it so can't imagine she made much money but they didn't look like they'd had a single customer today (and that's why I chose them)
I did go into a number of camera shops that stocked sony stuff but none of them had the specific stuff I needed so in the end I headed back to the hotel.
In the afternoon I just chilled out a bit, by the pool etc, to be honest I was still a bit knackered so I probably didn't make the best use of the day but then again I had a new tablet to play with.
Now it's not going to convert any ipad fans any time soon but for the money you can't complain, once I'd stripped off all the crappy stuff on it I didnt want (most of it chinese) and installed stuff i did want from marketplace it started to actually become quite a good little device.
That evening I was meeting up with another colleague from the uk who had been on holiday not far from here and was now back in BK for the night. He was meeting a couple of his mates who live here so I tagged along.
I hopped in a cab outside the hotel and as soon as we started moving the cab driver (who spoke perfect english) turned around and said "why didnt you take the sky train, traffic very bad between here and there"
Now seeing I had no idea how far apart here and there were it was a bit of unknown risk but I said I wasn't in a massive hurry and then spent 45 mins in the cab having a nice chat with the man. (it still only cost me £2)
He was right of course, the traffic was pretty bad, but to be honest i've seen worse, at least people werent driving into each other like Jakarta!
Got to Sukhumvit Soi 7 where I'd been told to head...and those who know BK well probably know where this is heading...
I get out the taxi and he told me to walk left so I did...as I did...I saw the 'other side' of bangkok. I mean metaphorically not geographically.
Some of you have probably heard of Pat Pong, well this street was one of its poorer cousins. Bar after Bar after Bar with Girl after Girl after Girl. 'oh my' I thought to myself where have I been taken. Pretty soon I realised I was actually in the right place and there was a bar half way down the street with the guys I was meeting.
We had a beer and then a couple of us hadn't eaten so we walked around the corner to a kind of open thai canteen restaurant that was serving mostly locals real thai food. I had a seafood in sauce with seaweed and was really really nice.
After then we met back up with the guys and it was decided due to my never having really seen the bangkok night life before that we would head to soi cowboy. A short cab ride later and we were there. It was similar to the first place only bigger, brighter and even more places of that ilk. A man with lower morals would have been in disneyland! However as they say I'm a good boy and know where my bread is buttered!
Although the sites were obvious and unsubtle the evening consisted of a couple of beers and some good chat in 2 different bars, their names escape me but I think one was like Barracca or something.
Part of me felt a little uneasy most of the evening as I was told that most of the girls were poor farmers daughters who came here to make money the only way they knew how and I found that a little sad. But on the other hand I'm glad I truly saw that side of BK.
After that it was a much shorter ride back to the hotel (the traffic had gone) and I headed into the lobby bar for one more drink with my bar tender friend Pick, he gave me some free thai whiskey to try which was really good!
It was late and the jet lag was laughing in my face now so I crashed.
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