The thing is, I am WAYYYYY too Type A to just show up somewhere without a plan. SO! Plan it is. As such, we decided to spend our first day in Bangkok basically planning the next few weeks (or at least days). To help us catch up on sleep, we decided to let ourselves sleep with hopes it would help with our time change. What time did we wake up today? 10:30 am!!!! And it. was. glorious.
After waking up late we went online for a while (hooray for fast internet connection!) before heading out on a walk to find lunch. We walked about a block from our hotel before coming to a string of small restaurants. We picked one, sat down, were handed menus...and pretty much stared at them blankly. The waitress (who had never left our sides as she waited to see what we picked) pointed at a bunch of things, said some words, TWO of which I recognized (Pad Thai), we said "THAT ONE" and she was off!
While our food was cooking we noticed a kitten underneath the table next to ours. It couldn't have been more than 3-4 weeks old. Super cute! But what was it doing in the restaurant? Not something we're used to seeing in the states... then, the waitress' son, who looked to be about 3 or 4 started chasing the kitten around the restaurant. It was pretty cute. He'd chase it, it would sprint under tables, he'd chase it, catch it, and put it on the tables... ya know, things you see pretty much every day. Cats on restaurant tables... while we thought it was a bit out of the ordinary for us, we also thought it was highly entertaining :-p.
Our Pad Thai came out a minute later and it was pretty delicious. We decided to add a few spices to it...well "a few spices" turned out to be SUPER hot peppers, and pretty soon we were both sweating. SUPER attractive lol. We are definitely NOT used to the spice-levels in Thailand!
While we had been enjoying our Pad Thai, our little friend had gone into the back of the restaurant (presumably where he lives with his mom). He had been gone about 5 minutes when all of a sudden, he burst back into the restaurant, butt naked, yelling and chasing around the cat again!! His mom saw him about 15 seconds later and started chasing him around and under the tables for about a minute before she was able to catch him! We could NOT stop laughing!! It was adorable and also ridiculous to watch the entire scene unfolding!! She quickly took him inside as we finished eating and the next time we saw him he was fully clothed :-p. When we told Nath about our lunch experience he assured us that that doesn't happen at all Thai restaurants!
After lunch we headed one door over so Jon could get some coffee, before going across the street to...7-11 for some snacks and water for later :-p. After our stops we went back to the hotel to continue trip planning and making moves! So far we've booked the following:
January 29-February 1: Siem Reap, Cambodia (Angkor Wat)
February 1-February 3: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
February 3-February 7: Chiang Mai, Thailand (there's a flower festival there from the 6th-8th!)
February 7-February 9: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
We were trying to figure out where to go after our time in Chiang Mai, so we looked up Air Asia's flights from Chiang Mai to several destination. Air Asia made the decision quite easy for us...with $38 tickets to Kuala Lumpur! We're still in the process of trying to find a couchsurfing host in Kuala Lumpur, but we're hoping we can find someone who will help us celebrate the Chinese New Year (on February 8th) in style! We're pretty excited about celebrating the New Year in Kuala Lumpur - a quick search on Google reveals it's one of the best places in the world for Chinese New Year celebrations!
After a quite successful afternoon, Nath picked us up for dinner around 7 pm. He took us to a place called Water Y, a rooftop bar and restaurant which overlooks downtown Bangkok, where we met up with his friend, Pap. It was beautiful up on the roof...although quite cold! (And when I say cold, I mean it was 16 degrees celsius...aka about 60 degrees Fahrenheit...). But when you're on a rooftop with the wind blowing 60 can be a little chilly! We felt bad for Pap though - he had gone running yesterday and completely locked himself out of his apartment. He had been wearing his same running clothes since the day before and was still in shorts and a t-shirt!
Nath and Pap ordered all our food for us. It consisted of a LOT of delicious Thai food - every dish was more delicious than the last! From spring rolls to pork tenderloin, spicy noodle soup to hot wings and chicken curry, we were STUFFED! Add on to that the large bottles of Leo beer and it was quite a dinner!
We also had a beautiful view out over the city of Bangkok, including the Elephant building (I thought we were done with our safari!)
All in all it was a pretty great night. We got back to the hotel a little while ago and we are READY for bed and to explore Bangkok tomorrow!
Jess' and Jon's highlight of the day: Water Y and our rooftop dinner with Nath and Pap
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