Greetings from Bangkok

It’s been a while since I’ve taken an extended vacation. I really don’t know what to expect in Thailand, but it should be fun and interesting. My friends Earl and Aporn are getting married in Bangkok. I’ve know Earl and Alvaro since our Ernst & Young days. We were all fresh out of college and happened to be on the same project. Alvaro and I both went to UCLA and constantly haze Earl (USC). We’ve all since left EY and have gone our separate ways but I look back with fondness on those days.

The group I will be traveling with is Alvaro, Lauris (cousin) and Nhi (sister). I met up with Alvaro in LAX and we braced ourselves for the 14 hour flight to Tapei. My cousin and sister are on a later flight. The flight itself was uneventful, though at one point I pulled out my "Chinese: 10 minutes a day" book. We learned a few phrases and it was funny when Alvaro busted out with the "che, che". The flight attendant was shocked to hear Alvaro speak Chinese and then started to speak Chinese at which point we just stared at her. Our flight took longer than expected and we landed at 10:15 PM local time and our connecting flight was at 10:45. I felt like we were in the "Amazing Race" as we jammed our way out of the initial flight. We made it without any problems. Another three hours and we should be in Bangkok (1:40 AM). Hopefully my brother will be able to pick us up since neither of us exchanged for any baht at LAX thinking the other would do it.

We settle in and get to my brother’s apartment at around 2:30 AM. He lives in a rather upscale district of Bangkok. It is probably equivalent to living on the Westside. We get about 3 hours of sleep and then we head out at 7:00 AM. It was quite an experience ordering food from the street vendors. Everything seems so inexpensive. For example, a bowl of noodles that Alvaro got was 25 baht (40 bath = $1). I went with the rice and meat combo. When we were sitting down and eating our breakfast, I think we saw our first "transi’. It looked pretty obvious and when he/she spoke. My brother went to work so we were left on our own. We really didn’t know what to do so we started to walk around the city and started taking the train to the various stops. We really didn’t have a destination. We just walked and walked. Everyone was in pants and heading really fast to their destination. We stood out like a black sheep. Somehow during the day, we ended up on a "Tu-Tu". This is a motorized taxi sort of a blend between a real taxi and a scooter. The guy seemed friendly enough and he was willing to take us anywhere we wanted to go. His name was Boone (at least that’s what we ended up calling him) and he was this old Thai man without any teeth and was a chain smoker. He said he was only going to charge us 20 Baht per person. We went to this Golden Buddha and took some pictures. There was a school nearby and the children seemed content with the littlest of things. We saw a soccer whiffle ball game going on and a group of kids playing hop scotch. There was pure innocence in the kids faces and it was refreshing to see.


My brother's place:

Alvaro on the prowl for breakfast:

Wandering on the streets of Bangkok:

Boone then asked us if we wanted to get "Thai Massages". He had this look in his face when he said it. Alvaro and I were pretty tired and the thought of getting a massage did appeal to us. We wanted to make sure where he was going to take us was an up and up establishment. When you say "Thai Massages" back home it means a completely different thing. So we had to be clear with Boone. No funny business going on. We ended up at this paying 800 Baht each for an hour and a half body massage. I took one for the team and Alvaro seemed to enjoy his massage more than mine. The masseuse applied pressure to points we didn’t even know existed on our body. All and all it was money well spent.

In our little "Tu-Tu"

Alvaro and our driver "Boone":

Kids playing hop-scotch at a nearby school:

Alvaro with his masseuse:



We then met up with my brother for lunch at a Food Court. It was very nice. There were cuisines of all types and once again we were amazed at how inexpensive things were.

My brother then took us to this custom tailor suit place. I needed to get a suit for the wedding. I ended up getting a very nice suit, two shirts, and a pair of pants for about $200. Did a little more street shopping and then went to get a foot massage. 300 baht for one hour. It tickels a bit when the start treating your foot but you get use to it and it feels really relaxing. Well worth the money. Man, we are getting spoiled here. Alvaro wants to get like a facial and spa treatment when we come back to Bangkok... wtf? We told ourselves we with limit the massages to once every other day...

Trying out the GQ sportcoat:

Man, I never knew there were so many pressure points to the foot:



My cousin and sister arrive tonite and we leave for Chiang Mai tomorrow morning. Hopefully I'll have time to continue to post.