[After a month's gap am finishing the day 3 events...thanks to my friends for reminding me]
Day was relatively lack lustre compared to our day 1 and 2. We spent the day having a
thai massage and also explored the full
stretch of main road next to our hotel in
Sukhumvit. We got to see a lot of the local life and culture on a busy
monday morning. I remember our taxi driver had told us that to show their loyalty to the king, the people of
thai wear yellow on
monday...and lo, on
monday we saw swarms of people in yellow
tshirts.
[Below : The famous Bangkok traffic]
After another heavy breakfast, we started walking from our hotel into the busy main road. There were quiet a few hotels and malls and also a conveniently placed Starbucks and McDonalds at the beginning of the stretch. Slowly these buildings gave way to the smaller shops selling souvenirs and the usual match-box hotels and eateries. The narrow, dirty, overcrowded side roads look as if we had turned and reached some street in Delhi instead. The overhead power lines and roadside transformers also familiar sight, in general the bustling city looks so much like Delhi or Mumbai. But one big problem with Bangkok is the lack of English name boards, most of the street signs and instructions are primarily in thai script.
We spent 2-3 hours just walking up and down the busy road, trying to pick a bargain at the souvenir shops. But nothing came across as collector's item....hmmm most of it was the usual junk...nothing spectacular. Anyways we had a lot of time in hand, so we decided to get a thai massage...atleast this was something completely thai! So we were back at the hotel, had a good lunch and checked out early. At the hotel spa, we went for our thai massage. It was a very nice experience getting pampered...but mind you, this massage is only for people who can handle a bit of pain. At the end of it, we both felt so refreshed.
In any trip there always has to be some casualty...so we had ours...my husband lost his tshirt in the hotel common room. Though we were given lockers to keep our clothes while we were at the spa...we hung his tshirt outside...and when we came back it was gone! We tried to trace it but the hotel staff were not very ethusiatic about finding out what happened to the tshirt...instead they started blaming us that we had kept it outside...so we abandoned the search and moved on.
[Below : On the way to the airport...thank god we started early]
So after all this drama it was already 5 and time for us to leave to the airport. The agency taxi dropped us at the airport nearly 2 hrs early so we went looking around the airport. Must say the airport is like a city in itself...lots of shopping and lots of statues and there is even a representation of the "Churning of the ocean for nectar" scene from the Puranas. Interesting to note the close ties thailand has with indian culture.
[Below : Churning of ocean scene]
[Above: Section of the superb airport]
And finally we were on the flight back home, after a great holiday. It was a great experience visiting a different country and getting to know its culture and in observing the similarities. In all it was a bindaas trip.
