Bangkok - Saturday

Pearl arranged us a taxi to Kuala Lumpur International Airport which would pick us up at 8am so that we could make our 11:30am flight. Normally this would've been fine, but we had been out partying at the Butter Factory nightclub until the wee hours, and we were shattered! Anyway we got the flight without incident and made our bleary-eyed way into Bangkok.

We booked a taxi driver to take us to our hotel, and after nearly being dropped off at the wrong place a couple of times, we were redirected by some very friendly Thais at found our home for the next two nights, Ratchada 17 Place. The place has a swimming pool with clear glass sides which I liked the look of, although I never swam in it. There was also a pool table and restaurant. The room was startlingly good, very spacious with two beds and a table and chairs, clean ensuite, free water in the fridge, and best of all a balcony with a cracking view of the sprawling metropolis that makes up a large portion of the city.

After settling in and spreading the contents of our suitcases around the room a bit, as well as an obligatory shower, we set off to explore the local area. We found lots of 'street food' carts, the ubiquitous food vendors of Bangkok, as well as much of Southeast Asia. Then with the help of a little map on a scrap of paper we were given by the hotel, we searched for and eventually found the nearest underground train station (MRT); Sutthisan. We bought railcards and then had a self-congratulatory meal at a very peculiar restaurant, called Peking.. something.

The peculiarity of the place was mostly thanks to the serving staff, who were numerous despite the complete lack of customers (yeah we know, don't go to an empty restaurant.. What can I say, we were intrigued). We were immediately shown to a table and swamped by around four of them, who handed us menus and then stood by our table expectantly waiting for us to order, which was a bit disconcerting. I sent them off to get drinks which bought us enough time to decide on our food; pork dumplings for Andy, Kuey Teow for me (I think). These were brought out one at a time, meaning I had almost finished by the time Andy's food arrived. We thought this was odd, but it quickly became clear throughout the week that this is fairly normal practice in restaurants. The waitresses then watched us eat, thankfully from across the room rather than at the end of the table. After that, we decided to cut and run and just put the whole experience down as one to laugh about afterwards.

Further down the road from the MRT station, back towards our hotel, were a couple of points of interest; firstly Mansion 7, which is a kind of spooky, haunted house theme bar, and another bar called Poseidon. I understand that there are some very friendly people working there, but we didn't go in. We passed a similar bar called Copa Cabana on the way home too. Back at the hotel we chatted to some people by the pool and played a bit of ping pong before going to our room to crash.