Day 02 20th June 2005

Went downstairs to the 4th floor to get some breakfast, complimentry of the hotel. Or rather, it’s included in our hotel stay. Waited for our designated van to bring us on our half day tour, which was also included in our tour package that we signed up for. Our tour guide was a cute 25% Chinese mixed Thai girl, with fair skin and pretty sparkling big eyes. Extremely skinny as well. Anyway, we were brought to the 4 face Buddha and you had to pray to it starting from one specific face… as in, there is a sequence or order to it. Stayed there for a short while, and continued on our tour to see one of the tallest standing Buddha.

Was a much longer drive out and there wasn’t really much to see there except… for the standing Buddha. It was really tall and covered with gold leaves…. The tour guide said something like the Thai king used to spend a lot of money on these things…. Wow. That was seriously a lot of gold if you ask me… There were plenty of cats there and this woman was feeding this huge group of them! One of them couldn’t stop meowing for some reason.

Our next stop was the jewellery factory, which was also our last stop. We had to sit in a mini theatre and watch a lousy video about how Thailand has the one of the nicest Sapphires and Rubies. Snoozed inside for a while. After I woke up, we were escorted to see how the workers made the rings. Quite pitiful for them because they were worse than animals caged up in the zoo. People were just peering over their work desks and staring at what they were doing. I think if I was anyone of them, I would have hammered my fingers too many times from the distraction. The jewellery design was surprisingly really nice!! I meant the modern designs anyway. Saw a really gorgeous modern sapphire ring but it cost something like SGD$1,200 or something like that. Geez. I will just stick to the free one that my mum gave me.

Met the tour guide at the coffee house and she told us that she could help us book for a 2 hour massage for 400Bht!!! Which included transport from hotel to the massage place and back! Wwoo… sounded good so I insisted that my mum took down her number. The tour guide then arranged transport to drop us at MBK = THE SHOPPING PARADISE!!!! Hahahhahaa…. For certain stuff anyway. My brother was on this big mad hunt for Billabong and Quiksilver t-shirts and board shorts, so we were walking around the humongous place looking around. We found this shop called LOBO. On the 2nd or 3rd floor, really cant remember, but I bought 3 t shirts, [no brand or rather got brand, but never hear before] 2 printed bags and my brother bought board shorts for only 400Bht [SGD$16]! And they were original Quiksilver ones!! I managed to get 2 green colour blouses only after that....

Met up with our parents for lunch at the food court upstairs. The food court was a different system from Singapore, where you have to purchase these coupons to get your food, instead of giving the stall owners the money. So funny, but anyway, the food was really cheap, for like… an average of 35Bht onwards. Although their food is cheap, but their portions were also quite small. Which is alright because that meant we could buy more stuff to share and try. Tried the Red Ruby dessert which was alright only and the durian with sticky rice…. Wah… I think Thai durian is like… the best lor. Tasted so heavenly….. Wwwwoooo….. wanted to go back to eat again but didn’t have the chance to.

So after lunch, walked around with my brother again and I think he ended up buying more things than me! After walking for so many hours, I could not take it and decided to go for a mani/pedi! So I found one at this hair salon like place [where there were many trans working there] and just plonked myself on the chair there.

Chinatown – Dinner
Decided to take CMI’s recommendations to go to Chinatown to eat good seafood for a good price. And especially the Sharks fin and Birds Nest! So again, hopped into a cab and turned out that the taxi driver wasn’t really sure where Great China hotel was! Luckily when we reached the heart of Chinatown [which wasn’t very big luckily], he winded down his window and asked the tuk tuk driver next to us where was the place! Turned out it was right in front of us. Chey….

My parents were walking around aimlessly and into this rather dark road and I was wondering where my dad was bringing us. He didn’t have a clue either so I just dragged my family into a restaurant that had posters of Sharks Fin and birds nest outside. Had a big bowl of Sharks fin each for only 300Bht! Wooo.. it was such a big bowl that I felt full after eating it! We had to force ourselves to finish up the rest of the food…. Yes, this trip was just about eating and shopping only. Although I was feeling so full, I still decided to wolf down a small bowl of the cheapest birds nest…. Hehz. Come all the way here to this country, then don’t do all these… like very wasted lor.

Hung around Chinatown afterwards and saw this guy carting around some packed durian. Bought one packet of maybe 8 rather giant sized seed durians for only 160Bht. Dirt cheap. For some reason, it didn’t look very appetizing, but it turned out to be really really good!! WWWWaaaaahhh… [we smuggled it into the hotel by shoving it into my poor brother’s bag!] He couldn’t stop complaining how his bag smelt so much of durian after that…

Day 3 to be continued….