My First Solo Trip Into Bangkok..a Visit to The Platinum Mall

There are some places which you just need to visit to believe. Bangkok is full of markets....what ever you want to buy it can be found. Cheap, expensive.....and always a haggle. The exception is usually in regular stores and this place called the Platinum Mall which is three huge interconnected towers worth of clothes, shoes, bags, accessories...everything. There is no haggling here unless you buy more than one item so it is actually a bit more relaxing. Some of the street vendors actually buy at the mall and resell. Tiny stores, lots of english and for the first time I saw Thais speaking english to each other. 

I was looking for shoes and although size 9.5 is huge in Asia, the land of the ladyboys does open up a niche that needs to be filled. Suffice it to say that at one point today, I found myself sitting beside a beautiful woman who spoke like a man and had feet that made mine look dainty. We had the same taste in shoes....but they looked better on him/her.

I took the bus downtown and back again so I now know the route of the 113. It's always a bit of an adventure and since that's what we signed up for, I sometimes take it that one step further. It is actually a great way to get some reading done and I always learn something new. 

Each bus a driver and a ticket agent and you have to tell the agent where you are going so they know what to charge you. Which basically means that you need to know where you are going.....yup, therein lies the problem. I still have not figured out it I am supposed to say the name of the area, the street number or what. I fumbled through but paid a different price each way so I probably was not as successful as I thought.

There's my bus...or one like it. You want to go with the closed windows which means air conditioning.

All of the Ronald's here are posed in a "wai" position which is a form of greeting.

Apparently America is not the only place that "Runs on Dunkin'". Once in a while we have a coffee at one of these. It is the same price as a meal which ends up being one of the "things that don't make sense" here. 

I followed these two on the way home from the market. An older lady is pedalling and the younger one is on the back holding the umbrella to keep the sun off. It was cute.

Vince and I got in on Friday from Bali and he left on Saturday for Penang. My Mum says she went on holiday there in 1948 which is kind of cool. Vince is getting the royal treatment from what he said today. he is getting quite the collection of ziploc bags which contain SIM cards and $ from each country for the revisits.

Nico passed through Bangkok on his way to....umm...I forgot but I think Laos, Cambodia etc. and we look forward to catching up with him when he comes through in December. There were a couple of questionable things at the market that I was really hoping he'd try for me but I guess it will have to wait.