Night Markets and ........

After our delightful Thai massage and Scott’s Swedish near encounter massage (He felt it got a bit personal) we met for an afternoon drink on the balcony to plan the rest of of our trip. (This consisted of me planning everything and explaining in great detail what our options were—over and over again—for money—and still having the two boys question what were we going to do next!)
We left for one of the night markets-the Suan Lum Night Bazaar. We cruised the stalls and ate at the German Beer garden while listening to a Thai band sing, “Achy Breaky Heart.” It was pretty surreal-especially when they pronounced “achy” as “a-chee.” I thought Steve was going to do a spit take with his beer! Scott and I got henna tattoos-he got a lizard and I trumped him by getting it’s bigger and more majestic cousin, a dragon.

After that we went to PadPong—the seedy night market. I will warn you right now if buying counterfeit goods and seeing hoochie shows will upset you…DO NOT READ FURTHER!!!!

Ok, you pervert. You kept reading. Fine by me. Mom, if you are still reading, just know I am A) only reporting the facts, ma’am and B) thoroughly enjoying the fact that you reading the dirty stuff! As soon as we alit from our near death experience of a cab ride—I swear the driver was giggling maniacally as he came to a screeching halt, missing the car forcing it’s way in front of us by mere inches—we were accosted by people trying to get us to go to the sex shows. They had placards written in English that named all the different acts performed at their club. I got the biggest kick just knowing as we walked they were constantly approaching Steve and Scott. Especially Scott-he was so flustered he started telling people he was mute and then covering his mouth. (Think about it-it’s funny.)
After passing several knock off watch stalls we finally stopped and took a closer look. They had all the big name brands with pictures from catalogs for comparison. Anyone that knows Scott knows he has pestered Steve so much about his Rolex that Steve has officially willed it to him upon his untimely demise. Well, I am now able to say while forcing back a giggle, that Scott is the proud owner of a Rolex. Not just any Rolex, the exact same kind of Rolex Steve has. It is a genuine Bangkok fake Rolex!

So newly tattooed and designered watched, Scott finally acquiesced to the constant pestering to see a sex show. Naturally, we had to accompany him in to make sure he didn’t try to take one of the girls home to America with to set up house. We followed this guy who brought us to the door of The Pink Palace. We marched up stairs, paid 200 Baht a piece ( $6.00) for a drink ticket and were led into the show. It was dark and seedy. There were 3 girls dancing—two were back-up gyrators—rather lackadaisical at that.
They all had on the same kind of bikini top and gold lame’ hot pants. The ”lead” girl had her shorts off and was dancing much in the same manner a young kid dances the potty dance. Then she inserted tongs of some sort into her hoochie and proceded to manipulate them and pick up plastic rings, pick them up and place them one by one on the neck of a coke bottle! As we drank our beer we watched as the lead girls switched in and out. We saw: hoochies opening up standard non-twist bottles of soda water; hoochies expelling long strings of razor blades, needles, glow in the dark flowers, and bells; shooting darts at a balloon held by a volunteer across the room; playing a whistle and producing ping pong balls and dropping them daintily into a cup of water. All this took place in less than hour. While Steve maintained his composure and managed to even look nonchalant, Scott and I were covering our mouth and eyes in horror as some the stuff emerged from the girls’ hoochies. Apparently we (Scott and I) were enough of show that a group of three couples were laughing and pointing at us! (I swear one of them was Mel Gibson-really!)

We left and tried to get a cab back to the hotel. One thing we have learned on this trip—it is always more expensive (by double) to return to the hotel. Steve’s theory is as soon we mention the name of our hotel the doolar, er Baht signs shine in the driver’s eyes and the price goes up. We ended up getting out of one cab because he wanted to charge us 200 Baht for an 80 Baht trip. (The other thing we have learned is the meters apparently “don’t work” at night…hmmmmm.) Finally we hooked up with a tuk tuk driver (it is like a motorized open surrey) who would take us back for 100B. I think the look on the doormens’ faces when we pulled up in this rickety old thing was priceless. There isn’t even a door for them to open to help us out. It was pretty funny!
Anyway…another night in Bangkok is over!

Day Markets

Today we up early and headed out to the second largest (flea) market in the world. (The largest is in Paris, I guess.) Scott came with us, but was reluctant—still in pain, but also wary of the market. Because we were there early the crowds were manageable and several stalls were not open yet, but WOW! They truly sold everything there! We bought tons of stuff. Easily the best barterer of our little threesome is Steve so Scott or I would ask a price and then call Steve over to negotiate. It is amazing how cheap everything is! The silk is gorgeous! So far I have bought 2 silk thingies. The most expensive thing we bought was 400 Baht. That’s $12.00! Tomorrow we are thinking of going back again—I am buying everything!!!!!

When we got back we went to the restaurant in our hotel and sat along the river again—it was buffet style. I have never seen a more beautiful dessert table in my life! Truly amazing! I will have to take pictures tomorrow. Naturally, the other tables with the non-desserty stuff were pretty, too, but the desserts were awesome!

Afterwards the boys wanted to nap—really, I gotta start pumping them with Yoo Hoo or something! We all agreed to get massages in the room. Scott had his first massage! I have not talked to him yet. We will see how it went.

Steve and I had Thai massages. I really liked it—very different. They do lots of stretching and pushing--=no rubbing, no oils. They were able to crack all of my fingers and all my toes! Steve said it was so loud it echoed across the river!

Oh, I cannot fail to mention our taxi ride back from the market. Scott likes to sit in the front—so he did. Steve and I sat in the back. The driver spoke very little English. We showed him the card our hotel had given us explaining in Thai the direction back to the hotel.
He smiled and said, "200 Baht, ok?"
Steve and Scott kept saying—no we will go by the meter (It is a big scam here not to use meters and over charge—but again we are talking $2-3 at the most.)
The man just laughed. Scott asked what he meant by laughing at us.
He smiled, “200 Baht?”
“No! We will use the meter!”
He laughed again and kept driving—his meter had been on the whole time, so we were royally confused. He asked where we were from.
“USA,” said Scott.
He laughed and shook his head.
“USA!” said Steve.
Laugh and head shake.
“America,” I say.
“Ahhh! America!
You friends? He said pointing to Scott and Steve.
Yes, friends
You married? (to Scott)
This is actually a shortened version of how we came to figure out he meant married—it actually involved a lot of gesturing.)
Finally we explained that Scott was single, no girlfriend, no kids.
“You want Thai woman?”
No! No! We laughed nervously and tried to change the subject.
Me have sister.
Oh, nice you a have a sister.
On farm.
Oh, you have sister on a farm. Hmmmm, well good for you.

Then he grabbed Scott’s arm, "Sister very pretty! Go home with you? Have one boy. Farm boy."
Huh?
"Want you bring sister home?"
By the time we all understood he was trying to set up Scott with his sister so Scott would take her back to America with him we were beside ourselves with laughter!
(I think next time we will put Steve in the front seat. At least he is interested in women!)

Anyway, when all was said and done the cab ride coast 200 Baht. (The cab ride TO the market was only 100 Baht.) I figure the extra 100 was for the entertainment!

First Night in Bangkok!

I have no idea what has posted or what I have lost. Although the internet at the hotel is free it is really sucky. I mean slow to the point that my ‘puter goes into sleep mode before anything opens up. So, sorry about that.

Anyway, the hotel (other than that internet thing) is absolutely fantastic! It is a ranked one of the 5 best hotels in the world and I can understand why! We were picked up at the airport in a van—ok, woo hoo, and given water. When we arrived at the hotel 45 minutes later we were greeted with flowers and the traditional Thai greeting of honor—prayer hands up to nose level and a bow. We were escorted to our room on the 35th floor. It is amazing! We look out over the river. Absolutely beautiful! I have lots of pictures!

I took a very luxurious bath-huge tub with tv! It was great after the flight and the crazy car ride! Scott came up (he is on the 25th floor) and we had beers and enjoyed the view from the deck. Then we all went down to the Thai restaurant in the hotel. Incredible! We were seated in our own little tikki hut over looking the river. There were flame torches all around to light the area. We could watch all the long tail boats and lit up dinner cruise boats go by. One of the cruise boats was lit up with Christmas trees, Santa and reindeer! How strange for a predominantly Buddhist country!

I wanted to hit one of the infamous night markets, but both Scott and Steve were poops. Er, I mean, pooped. Scott is still in quite a bit of pain. The funny thing is I have noticed a direct correlation to how funny he thinks he is to how recently he took his percocet. Strange that!

Jurong Bird Park

Today I went to the Jurong Bird Park which boasts over (insert large awe inspiring number here) kinds of birds/species. It was actually pretty cool--well, not weather wise. I took the train and a bus all by myself. Scott and Steve worshipped my bravery. I accepted it gracefully. Smile.
The park was huge with tons of wide open avaiaries. I loved walking through everything and just standing very still until I could see the wild life. At one point it rained and you could literally see the steam!
One thing I know the nephieces would have loved was the Lorrie Aviary. You could go in and feed them nectar from a cup. They are very brightly colored and inquisitive birds. I have a movie of one who decided to hop on my shoulder to see if I had any food. I didn’t. But it got a kick out of licking—you read that right—licking my face and neck and playing with my earring. It was pretty funny. One thing, though, the birds like to cheep, loudly. The one I made rte movie with kept dong it in my ear—it is more piercing than SP’s melodious call. It was fun feeding them. When I finally got some food for them I ended up with 3 of them crawling all over me. This is fine, but as is the way of nature. What goes in must come out. One kid saw the bird poop on my shirt and I thought he was going to bust a gut laughing at and pointing at me. Ahhh, children are so subtle! (It was easily washed off on in the bathroom—if only liquid goes in, only liquid comes out!)
Actually, I was kind of amazed of how many different large birds there are in the world. I mean some of them are totally prehistoric looking and scary. Unfortunealty I could not get any good pictures of them—they were in the shade. I watched a coupke of bird shows. I even was picked as a participant in one and “earned” a free drink ticket! A cockatoo flew out and put one in my hand. It was cool.
Later I got up with Steve and Scott and we went to a Chinese Szechwan restaurant called Si Chaun Doa Hua. It is called the Chicken Szechwan Death March Place by Steve and Scott. Hmmm, wonder what that could mean?
Anyway, we ate more weird food that I didn’t understand. I avoided the super super spicy stuff, but did have the chicken they were talking about. I did not eat the peppers—unlike a certain gullible weasel at the table who had to prove he could. We have it all on tape—Hee hee! Scott was in true pain! We also ate some jellyfish—which was ok, if you could get over the texture issue. We have Scott on tape eating that as well. It is, um, noisy and not pretty.
We also indulged in “Eight Treasures Tea”. It has a bunch of stuff—like whole flowers and nuts and strange looking berries. They pour in the hot water with these 6 foot long spouts. It was pretty amazing. In order to drink the tea you had to keep the cover on it. It tasted pretty good. We bought some. You all will have to try it!

Sunday

Ok, I am trying to catch up here...
Sunday- kind of a nothing day. We were all still recovering from jet lag. We walked around for a bit and ended up at a Japanese Tepanyaki place for a late lunch. Great food! Then we we went back to our respective rooms (around 3pm) to rest a bit...ahem, I slept from 5pm Singapore time until 1am. I got up for an hour or so and read and went back to sleep until 5am. I was not alone in my long nap!

Slacker

Yes, I am slacking. I have some good (two of my posts wwere lost due to internet failures) and some not so good reasons (I get tired and am in bed really early!)
Right now we are heading out for drinks and chili crabs, then I hope to catch up more tonight and tomorrow morning. Here are a few pictures of latest activities...

Fireworks and feng shui

Last night we went to the Chinese place. We had been there before on my previous trip. It is the one where as an appetizer we had deep fried little fishes which looked like french fries with little black eyes. We had those again--I don't know if they are more nutritious than french fries, but they are very good! I didn't take a picture this time...really, once you've seen one eyeballed french fry you've seen them all.

We had Peking duck--which was fab. We also had some sort of green veg that I couldn't for the life of me pick up gracefully with chopsticks and get all the way into my mouth. You'd think when all you are given is chop sticks and a chinese soup spoon they would cut things into bite size pieces. Nope. The green veg was like eating crisp, yet slimy--those Chinese are amazing at that--6 inch stalk and leafy broccoli stems. If I managed to get one to my mouth with out dropping it along the way I couldn't fit the whole thing into my mouth. I would then sit there with droopy greens hanging out of mouth while I tried to rein them in as fast as possible, leaving me with a shiny nose (see earlier) and an even shinier, yet tastier-garlic and butter, chin.

I asked Scott how to do it and he said, "I just suck hard."

I didn't want to further the poor boy's ego woes by agreeing, but after he commented that I looked like Nessie of Loch Ness fame while eating my veg, I had to agree. He sucked hard.

We also ate something called a bamboo clam. It was about the size of a crayola paint set, long and thin. I tried to take a picture of it with the camera phone. If Scott helps me I will try to upload unto the blog. It was...ok.

One thing that cracked us up...we did have lots of plum wine, which contrary to most experiences with alcohol, it tastes worse the more you drink...was the Placement of the Dishes. True it was uncanny how there were servers everywhere and if you lifted the last thing off a plate they would materialize out of nowhere and replace the dish with a new one. Even if all you did was drip some sauce on a plate you were not using it was immediately replaced. The second your wine cup touched your lips and was set down it was refilled instantly--therefore I can say I really only had one true glass of wine. The funniest part was the Bringing of More Dishes.

The server came and set down three empty plates A B C. Then arrange them A B C. Then rearranged them into A B C. We thought it was odd they were not equally spaced so we arranged them A B C. Two seconds later, the server reappeared, without the food, and reset the plates as AB C and then came back with the food. Apparently, we are not only NOT masters of the feng shui of classic dinner settings, but we were bringing disaster and humiliation upon the whole restaurant when we arranged our own dishes. We are bad foreigners.

After that we mosied on back to the Swiss Hotel Stamford and up to our lowly 20th floor room--there are 70 floors. We had some chocolaes and watched the NDP (National Day Parade) fireworks over the bay from our balcony. Not a bad day!

Saturday

First day here. I must say it was absolutley wonderful to sleep in a fully horizontal position! I did sleep some on the plane ride from Tokyo-that helped, too.

Started off this morning with Kaya Toast--a coconut (green or yellow in color-we had green) jam with butter on toast and Mee Siem--spicy noodles with a hardboiled egg in a chili (like hot pepper chili) broth. Nothing like hot and spicy food on a hot and humid day first thing in the morning with coffee!
Actually, weather-wise it isn't too bad. High of 88/ low 80 humidity around 75%--which is pretty reasonable around here. Still, it feels like even in AC that you always have a layer of sweat clinging to you. I have decided Singaporean people have no pores, because I have yet to see anyone here even look shiny! Me on the other hand...I am as shiny as a recently oiled body builder. Pretty.

Scott lent me one of his (many) cell phones so I can text/call Scott and Steve anytime and bother them while they work. Yippee!

Tonight we are going to Chjimes--a converted convent/church that is now a restaurant complex. We are going to Lei Garden, an authentic Cantonese (Chinese) restaurant. Then we will head back to our hotel which overlooks the marina and the south China Sea so we can watch the fireworks from our hotel room balcony.

The pictures are of our current view from our balcony as of 4:45 pm. The big bug eyed looking thing is the Esplanade--the Singapore Arts and Cultural Centre. It is supposed to look the durian--a fruit that is well known around here--and banned on the bus/transportation systems due to it's awful smell. (It is suppose to taste good, but smell awful. I have yet to try it. Last time I was here I tried dorian ice cream, but never got past the smell to taste much of it.) The greens below are the cricket fields. We watched them playing a match this morning before we left for breakfast. The white phallic thing is a war memorial for all those who died WWII.

Airport Blues

OK. I am officially sick of being on a plane and I am bored. It is almost 11pm Mpls time. It is almost noon where we are going (Singapore) and I have no earthly idea what time it is in over the ocean. We still have 3.5 hours left on the San Fran to Tokyo leg. It is still another 8 hours to Singapore!
I have already watched two movies- “Thank You for Smoking” and “Stick It”. I have eaten dinner, a dessert and a snack. I even took a Unisom to try to sleep. No go. Alas. I have played the onboard interactive games (solitaire, Bejeweled, and Reversi) I have played the trivia game through several rounds. I have even been reading “The Chemistry of Joy”. Not tired. If someone just told me the alarm near my bed was about to go off and I would have to face a day of work, I am sure I could easily be tired enough to sleep. Hopefully, I will sleep enroute to Singapore. If not, I will be way body clock screwed. Both Steve and Scott are sleeping. Or was, until Scott just got up a minute ago. Most people are sleeping. This happened to me last time, too. I survived.
So nothing to report really, just boredom. And the fact that I snuck on some contraband lip-gloss. Sure, it really is a bomb, but it makes my lips so sparkly and shiny I could never just give up the little plastic pot to get revenge on America for all it’s materialistic greed and commercialism. Hey, it was from Victoria’s Secret!

And so, in closing, I would like to say…. I’m super. Thanks for asking.

Hello!

OK, I know I left everyone hanging on my last travel blog...hopefully that won't happen again! I should have internet access the entire time I am traveling--staying in big cities helps!
Anyway, tomorrow is the big day! I will be sitting in an airplane for or at an airport for over 25 hours! Woohoo! Travel really is exciting!