My first trip to Thailand.

A snapshot of the plane I was going to trust my life on. Haha. Snapped just before I turned off my phone for the journey. All of these pictures are taken with my Nokia 7610. =D

Phone is resurrected at Bangkok International Airport. Gee was I lost and confused. I had no idea where to go and what to do. First time traveling alone. lol. Quite freaky, but I wanted the self satisfaction of pulling this off on my own. haha.

After successfully getting the cab driver to take me to the stadium (where my church and our Thai affiliates having our meetings) I met up with the others from Malaysia there, then immediately got down to practice. As soon as practice was over, we headed to the hotel. This shot is of the hotel lobby , a very welcomed sight after a long day (I had gotten up at 8am, went to Uni, drove to the airport after class and flew straight to Bangkok, then immediately went for practice by the time we reached the hotel, it was about 11pm, Bangkok time).

I took out the hotel's room service menu to order dinner. Surprise surprise... NO TOM YAM! I had to goals to accomplish in Thailand, and that was to 1. get some real Thai Tom Yam and, 2. Try one of their fabled coconuts. Anyways, I ordered Fried Kuey Teow instead. Check out the width of the noodles. It's almost like, 1 inch across. lol.

The van that shuttled us between the hotel and the stadium had an interesting interior. I wonder why though... Its not like the passengers are going t be staring up there and admiring the ceiling... But I ended up doing that anyway.

Managed to find some free time and hurried to the nearest mall with uncle Mak. Really interesting. the mall was huge, but the queerest thing was, there was shop after shop selling food. at every floor, there would be like a whole section devoted to food. I've never seen so many food shops in a mall in my life. ever.

Some strange guitar design in the mall. I can't remember what's the place called though... Bangkok Central? something like that? hahaha.

More strange guitars. Notice the tuning knobs are in the center of the bodywork.

A row or miniature bikes and ATV's So cute. haha.

Still at the mall, at the sports section they sell KATANAS! Oh wow... yum yum.

Talk about innovative... Insert coin and use the PC. lol.

They have arcade machines housing X-boxes as well. Something you don't see in Malaysia.

Further down the mall (as in the lower floors) there are more food courts. And much much more food.

Like shark fin soup.

They had a cool system at the food court though. You buy a prepaid card, then whenever you purchase something to eat, you hand the card t the store owner, who will scan it and deduct the appropriate amount from your card. Once you're done eating, return the card to the counter, and they'll return you the balance left n the card. No loss for you. lol.

Some strange fruit I see them selling all over, but never got the chance t try it out.

I think this would be used to make the mother of all Leng Chee Kangs.

Oooohhh.. sauces and dips. One thing that's special over there is the amount of chili sauces and dips you can take to complement your meal.

Talk about neat presentation. Nuts, beans and stuff like that.

close up...

Cheese sausages wrapped in bacon anywone? Barbecued right infront of your eyes. *drools*

Check out their doughnuts and stuff. Haha. The ones that are shaped like flowers are made that way so that it will be easier to stick them into the cups of sauce dips you can buy to complement the doughnuts

Another close up.

Strange stuff at the supermarket. I think the label describes the picture well enough.

lol! Check out their BBQ bananas.. and toasted bread. Something I've never seen before. The bananas that is.

Oh yeah. The cab drivers in Bangkok are simply insane. Really. I can be quite a reckless driver at times, but these guys... wow. I mean, look at his dashboard. What on earth are those things doing there? LOL! Crazy. They WILL floor the paddle at any opportunity... even if the car in front is only 10 meters away. As soon as my cab driver hit the freeway, he was pushing 140 km/h, tail gating a pickup truck. lol.

I bought some desert home form the mall to try. Glutinous rice with sweet santan (coconut milk) and mango slices. Quite interesting, and very sweet.

Lo and behold... TOM YAM!

Persistence pays off. One of the nights I decided to demand for tom yam. haha. So finally we asked one of the road side stalls near the hotel "TOM YAM? TOM YAM?" The kind guy replied (with sign language) "no, walk down the road" so we did, and we found this stall. YAY!

Tom Yam fish head. woot. It's good. Really good.

On the way back to the hotel we pass by a TESCO. not like the Tesco's in Malaysia eh? Our's are huge hypermarkets. Theirs are like... 7-11.

Oh, something else I bought from the mall... Pre-skinned Pomelos! I'M IN HEAVEN! WAHAHAHAHAHA

Anyways, In Tesco, they sold regular eggs, salted eggs, and these strange PINK eggs. I wonder what's special about them.

On the last day I was in Bangkok (Sunday) I paid a visit to the Cha-Tu-Chak (or whatever the world it is called) market. Get this. The market has 4000 stalls. 4000. It's HUUUUUGE and you can find almost ANYTHING in the world for sale there... even snapping turtles. LOL! Anyways. These are beautiful aren't they?

They are carved and dyed by these two guys. Talk about deft hands. wow. seriously... Look at the details.

Katanas again, at the market...

And more weird stuff there

If you notice, there's a paper stuck on the large humanoid's chest. It actually says, no pictures. hahaha. But I didn't read that till I had snapped these shots.

At the Airport ready to leave for home. Had lunch at the KFC airport and snapped a picture of their toy Hamtaros. lol. An embarrassing fact: I was supposed to fly home on my own as well, and after checking in my luggage, I misread my boarding pass and thought my flight was 1 hour later than it really was. So I meandered around, laughing at how crude, ununderstandable and weird the English of the PA announcers were. Little did I know that at some point, they were calling MY name, for my plane was leaving without me. LOL! Anyway, I missed my flight and had to buy another ticket to get myself home. Thank God my dad had handed me extra Thai Cash. lol.