A Weekend in the City

Sorry for the late posting of my weekend, but I haven’t had much internet access this week. After school on Friday I took a van to Bangkok for my programs mid-semester holiday reunion. I figured it would be a good time to see some people I haven’t seen in a while and get a free dinner. After an engaging conversation with my taxi driver in Bangkok where we communicated the best we could despite our language barriers, I arrived at the restaurant where the reunion was. To my disappointment, there were only about 20 or so people that actually showed up, and most of them were people that I see almost every weekend anyway. At least I got a free dinner out of it. The ironic thing is, I paid for my transportation into the city from my school for a free dinner. So, I actually ended up paying more than I would have if I had just stayed at home. But I will take any chance I get to get out of my boring town, and Bangkok is always a good time.

After dinner, we went to our hostel and had an extreme altercation with the lady who runs it. There are too many ridiculous details to go into it all, but basically she accused all my friends and I of trespassing and stealing a room key, she started screaming at us, calling us “low level people” and telling us never to come back again. We never even did a single thing wrong. We showed up with our passports ready to check in and then all hell broke loose. At 5am, she came into our friends room shaking and screaming at them that they were trespassing and that she was going to call the police. We got the heck out of there the next day, even though we paid for another night, and we found a much better hostel down the road with an extremely nice owner from Georgia, who was such a relief after that nightmare of a lady.

That day we kind of took it easy. We were staying close to the largest shopping mall in Southeast Asia, which just happens to have an English movie theater. I was determined to see a movie, since I hadn’t seen one since I had been in Thailand. We decided to see Avatar in 3D, and I really like it. Afterwards, I went with one of my friends to do a little shopping and then headed back to the hostel to get ready for the night. We showered, changed, got ready, etc for the nights activities. And after a very nice dinner at a very Christmased out restaurant called Gullivers Travels, our night began.

Our first stop was the famous Bangkok Sky Bar on top of the Lebua State Tower. This place is amazing. Some 60 stories high up in the air, you can pretty much see every single rooftop in Bangkok. Everything is lit up, and you really get an idea of just how giant and wonderful this city is. Drinks were super expensive though, so I only had one. A whiskey coke, quite out of character for me. Next, it was off to some smaller, less expensive pubs back on the ground until we met up with the rest of our group. Everyone wanted to go to a club, so we ended up going to the most famous club in Bangkok, Bed. All the Thai celebrities and rich Americans come here, but I found it to be a bit overwhelming and not all that fun. Pretty cool atmosphere though. By the end of the night it was 3am, and I was tired. On our way back to the hostel, we stopped to get some pizza. And as great as it was, I really wished it was Jumbo Slice.

I didn't take this picture, but this is the view from Sky Bar