Siam Square

We learned that there was a shuttle bus (to somewhere) leaving on the hour so we went down and joined the group of people already waiting.

“Where do you want to go?” asked the attendant
David and I looked at each other. We hadn’t thought that far ahead.
“I don’t know”. I say “An MRT station?” I remembered too late that MRT is in Singapore, not Bangkok “Siam Square or somewhere?”.
The attendant looked back at me puzzled
“Haven’t you got a Lonely Planet book or something?”
“Um, no”

I didn’t add that I didn’t feel the need to get one as we have been to Bangkok loads of times and are only passing through this time. Anyway, he smiled and helped us into the minibus and even gave us a card with information on how to get back to the hotel in Thai to give taxi drivers later.

We weren’t actually that far away from the centre of the city as it turned out as 20 minutes later we were dropped of at the MBR Centre in Siam Square. I had been in there before, but it was David’s first time. It’s an enormous, bustling, noisy, confusing, rundown city of a mall. Loads of floors containing shops, stalls, massage parlours and food stands. We were hungry so headed for the well signposted foodcourt on the 4th floor. They give you a plastic card when you enter and each time you choose something from one of the stands, the staff do something to your card and then you pay at the end. I love these places as you can have all sort of bits and pieces from different stands. We went for tom yum kung each and a papaya salad to share. We also chose a fresh juice each. I had forgotten how good the juices are in Thailand – great for soothing chili-burnt mouths. It was a fairly smart place and almost all of the customers were foreign. On previous visits, he had managed to find food courts that ordinary Thais went to. We found one of these on the floor above and stopped for lab (spicy minced pork), green curry and more later on.

In between these bouts of eating, I stopped at a beauty shop for a well overdue manicure and pedicure while David joined the people in the row of hospital beds getting massages. I had a window seat to do some people watching. There really are some phenomenally badly dressed foreigners wandering around Bangkok. One guy in a string vest sporting a mullet came into for a massage and was ushered to the bed next to David. I haven’t seen a mullet since the early 90s – where on earth was he from?