It’s now about 6-30pm and I am back in my room with a scotch and coke by my side.
I got up about 8 and went and had a swim, followed by a spell in one of the pool side lounges reading. I came back to the room and spent some time on the net before getting in the shower. It was luxury after the instant heater in WB, where you get to choose between pressure or heat but not both. I enjoyed it so much I only just got to breakfast before it closed.
I then got the concierge to call me a car from the Gems Gallery and in the half an hour or so I wandered up the street to Asia books, which was open this time where I bought the famous Nancy Chandler’s map. This is aimed at foreigners and describes what is where for shopping and so forth and has maps of various markets.
The car turned out to be a Mercedes and after crawling up Sukumvit we eventually got to the tollway and it was quite quick from there on.
I got my bracelet fixed and cleaned while I was shopping. Last time I was in Bangkok I was planning to but some different coloured jewellery since most of mine is sapphire and silver. However I got side tracked by the very nice and relatively expensive bracelet I bought (the one that got fixed today). This time I did a complete set in Garnet and silver. Ruby is obviously a better class of stone to go for in the red stones but it tends to look a bit washed out in silver as well as being a lot more expensive. Anyway, I bought a bracelet, necklace, pendant, earrings and a ring that more or less match in the garnet. The ring had to be resized twice. The first resizing was actually a size too big. While I waited, I sat in the lounge, which is one of the places where you can take photos, and they supply you with complimentary tea, coffee or, in my case, soft drink while you wait. They have a couple of aquariums there but not quite as spectacular as the ones on the sales floor and a wooden carving of a jungle scene.
I decided to go to Pan Tip rather than back to the hotel and left in a mini van. Not sure whether that was because I didn’t spend enough or that it was just the next available. Pan Tit Plaza is a 5 story IT mall and I’m sure Jonathan would have loved it. Apart from a vast number of hardware shops, both generic and branded, there are also a very large number of stores selling pirate copies of movies, music, games and software. Of course I would never buy anything illegal but if I did I might have bought a number of movies, a few composite CDS of music mps, some X box games for David and a game and some web editing software for the PC. A lot of the fakes you can buy at least pretend to be real with the labels printed on them but these were plain Cds without even a hand written indication of what was on them and very badly printed single page front covers.
I also bought another key board. The one I have been using in WB is ok for carting between the office and the hotel but is just a bit too big to fit in the laptop bag and get the zip closed and I found one slightly smaller for under $10. It will be handy once I get home and go into one of my clients, as I always find using the built in keyboard a bit challenging, especially since it does not have a separate numeric keypad. I am using the new one now and it will take a bit of getting used to. The keys are slightly smaller and in particular the spacebar is not as wide and a bit more to the left. I have hit the Alt key quite a lot by mistake.
By the time I’d done all that and resisted the urge to buy SD disks and external hard drives it was after 4pm. I walked to the next intersecting road and turned towards Sukumvit, buying some corn on the cob to eat on the way. I got to the Zen/Central Mall on the corner. After taking a photo of the shrines, I was just buying some char grilled chicken from a road side stall when it started to rain. Like everybody else I ran for the shelter by the mall. It was quite heavy and left the ground covered with pools of water, but only lasted 10 minutes.
I then wandered around a photo exposition – “The earth from above” which had many spectacular shots. This is not Google Earth but I think many of the shots were from a helicopter or plane and they were about 4 by 3 feet in size. These were outside the mall surrounding a fountain on the corner where two sky train lines come together.
I then hopped the sky train back to the hotel. The traffic was again horrific. The sky train runs above the road with elevated walkways for some, but not al,l its length. The station is marked so that you know where to line up. The boarding passengers line up either side of this and the departing passenger have a clear path to get through. I was thinking how clever this was but when my train pulled up, it was misaligned by a couple of metres and everybody had to shuffle along.
(Later) The photo is of the shrine in front of my hotel.I had dinner at a a small restaurant in a small hotel just around the corner. Garlic spare ribs and fried rice and a drink -$5. Chatted with an English guy staying there, who recommended the ribs. I had decided to get a manicure and pedicure but hadn't seen a place all day so I headed the other direction down Sukumvit to the next Soi (side street) and eventually found one. It was after 9-30 by now and by the time she had finished it was well after 10. Unfortunately although my nails looked very nice the nil polish was still tacky and I kept smudging it or getting my hair caught in it when I brushed it off my face. Even after using the hair dryer they still weren't hard. I had intended to get a foot massage as well but decided that would be pointless with wet toenails. In the end I gingerly got my wallet out , paid slipped on my thongs and left. Not as good a result as I had expected and evn at 1am when I went to bed they were still not dry, although they seem to be theis morning - dry but smudged.
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