the entry about a short getaway that hollers "sawadee krap"

i reckon i have exceeded my own expectations: i haven't touched a computer terminal for the past two weeks when overseas. well, except for the occasional click-and-scroll at cafes that are situated apart by a five-minute walk interval ever so often in this part of thailand.

aaah, sweet bangkok, the land of thousand smiles, genteel pleasantries, soft-ie language articulates, and of late, known by most as the land of ceaseless airport riots. here is where you get endless rows of salivating offerings from streetside hawkers. where you can witness the banter of them hawkers peddling for customers in a massive cacophony. where spices are mashed, bashed, smashed, crushed, chopped and the pestle and mortar constantly pound in a rhythmic routine. where the sizzle and cackle of food frying, the cloud of chili eddying from the wok, the aroma of herbs all grind together in a fiery frenzy that has become quite the highlight of bangkok streets.

however, worried that street food might not have any street cred, thus potentially giving our guts any grief in the most remote sense, the three of us (jeremy, valerie and i) veered off from the streets totally and ended up chomping up nosh in restaurants instead.

hovel-wise, we put up in a modest boutique hotel called the heritage, and checked into one of the smaller rooms available (budget constraints). by some divine intervention, thankfully, we were upgraded to the supreme suite due to the hotel's own scheduling complications. thank god for that! here's an orientation of our hovel as shown by me and jem, courtesy of valerie's camera.

a king-sized bed for the three of us: whoopee!

sitting atop the throne, a.k.a. dump depositor

jem also ropes in to demonstrate dumping, the classy way.

jem demonstrates bathing with clothes on

the exterior views of our hotel, taken with my nikon d60 (beams with pride)

our first stop took us to pratunam and mbk, the shopping centers better known for churning out "designer-wear inspired" products, the exact counterpart of finer malls with their finer regalia. nothing really took our breath away, except in the case of valerie, who came back to the hotel with shite-load of ladies' garb. the girls always have it easy, dang!

no d&g nor dior to be seen within the confines of mbk

getting more excited over the doughnuts than the shopping experience

jem with his first buy: authentic dkny undies

for the following days, the boys and girls split camp when it came to shopping, all in fervent hope of getting hold of more merchandise by combing more retail areas consecutively, thus effectively. for the boys, the outcome was no more a success than finding a needle in the haystack, until we came across the zapp shop, which was tucked up in the second floor of a empty looking premise in siam square. finally, a shop that lifted our half-hearted spirits! we managed to browse around the shop longer than all the window-shopping we'd done combined and got some reasonably nice buys.

jem

me

val

a little recharge along the way (risque)

(below: after a tad too much of the same cam-whoring, we decided to try something different. remember skimming through those tabloid magazines and seeing pictures of celebs caught on camera by the paparazzi? well, that's our inspiration!)

did we succeed much?

grouchy.. a hungry man is an angry man

in the evening, we doused ourselves in alcohol and r&b music at the happening locale rca. the entire strip was like a boulevard, except instead of trees, the street was lined with hip clubs. we plonked ourselves at route 66 and had a blast. the deejay was working the crowd, the crowd was guzzling booze and the booze was, well, booze. it's a shame, though, that the shutters had to come down by only 2 in the morning.












pigging out at swan lum, the local night market, was a first for us when it came to eating streetside food. it was already the last night, all bets were off. it was also a first for us, taking the tuk-tuk, a motorized version of the rickshaw.

a little preening goes a long way

finally, a group shot.

extra! some random pictures i took in bangkok, demonstrating the hiccups of the english vernacular by thai folks.

this one's a mystery to me; i've never heard of a place called reunion ever.

editor's note: this is a dual-launched entry. for the other part, go to popthemusicdrug.

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