It's embarrassing to say, but we have been in this area for 3 full months and have seen very little of actual Bangkok proper. It just goes to show that we really aren't city people. In fact, we've kind of been avoiding it because it's just overwhelming to know where to start. Well, we made a resolution while on vacation that we would try to get out more during this second semester, and explore more than just the 10 km around our apartment.
This weekend, we saw a little more of Bangkok. On Saturday, the couple that hosts our small group offered to show us around downtown (As far as we understand it, there are actually 3 downtowns, but we got to see the shopping district, I guess you would call it). They have a car, so getting there was super simple compared to taking the various kinds of public transportation that we usually have to take. It was awesome to spend time with them, and crazy to see that way that upper-class Thai people live!
We walked along one of the main streets in Bangkok, through a string of immense malls. They all have at least 7 stories, all with movie theatres, some with aquariums... They make Park Meadows and Washington Square look like absolute babies!
We started at the original Central Mall (we mentioned our local Central in a previous blog). They were having there annual flower festival, so we took the escalators up and down to see the beautiful, extravagant exhibits.
This was on the kids' clothing level. That large yellow thing is a duck, and you can see the ears of a white rabbit behind.
The parking lot was turned into a gazebo and full-on rose garden!
Next was Central Mall. You may recognize this name because it was where the red shirts were camped out during the protests. It was awful to see all the damage that they caused. A huge department store on the front of the mall was completely burnt down, killing several people; there is no way to tell how many. The top level was also pretty damaged. You can kind of see the part of the burnt building behind the free way in this picture.
They have been rebuilding it since last summer, but in some places inside, it still smells like smoke. The store was owned by a Christian family. There are no a lot of signs in front of the building at the construction site. It was really a devastating thing for this country.
This is a nice restaurant with a pretty view where we stopped for a smoothie and to rest our feet. This is Jack and Wendy, a wonderful Canadian couple that lead our house group and have taken us under their wing.
We continued on to several other gigantic malls, and then had dinner at one of their favorite restaurants called Beirut. They had delicious Lebanese food: it's probably a good thing that we're not too close, otherwise we'd come here all the time. It was a wonderful meal, and we went home happy and tired.
We have decided that we are definitely not mall people, and that we may never understand why some people are happy to spend every weekend at the mall, but it was a good experience.
Today, Sunday, after church and a nice lunch with some people from our house group, we went back into Bangkok on our own to a huge market called Chatuchak market. The place is so big that you can buy detailed maps of all the stalls and still get lost. It was kind of overwhelming, even though we just scratched the surface. Here is a small sample of the book section:
And here is the human traffic.
It was very slow going, but a great place to people watch. We were proud of ourselves for walking out of there without emptying our wallets: it's a good thing we went Christmas shopping in Chiang Mai!!
Well, there you go, our weekend in Bangkok.
No comments:
Post a Comment