The Big City

We left out early Friday morning on Air Asia. Air Asia is definitely a budget airline. When I was booking online, there were extra charges for baggage, using their secure internet site, picking your seat, and for ordering food. By the time I finished booking our tickets, I was exhausted, but as you can tell by the picture once we boarded the plane everything was looking good. We were ready for the adventure! We took three with us from our city...Kaimook, Lili, and Pawn.
Somehow Rusty and I ended up in a row by ourselves. I guess we were just blessed to have some extra space.
One of the first things we noticed in Bangkok were the super nice cars. Rusty and Mr. Korn saw this car in their taxi. All of us girls were riding with a friend of Mr. Korn's, and we saw a new porsche. Rusty says it's just a souped-up VW, but I wonder if that's just what people say when they don't have one...lol.
We checked into the hotel. We had super rooms on the 9th floor. Mr. Korn's friend got us a really good deal on them and also invited us over to his house for lunch. To be invited over is a special treat, and we really enjoyed their kind hospitality. They have a son-in-law who is American so they are use to foreigners, but they enjoyed having us because we were willing to eat whatever they served us AND enjoy it.
We met up with Scott at the airport also. He had arrived in BKK the night before. We went to do some touring around Bangkok and found some fresh ice cream for everyone. It was great on a hot day!
This trip to BKK was pretty exciting for me. Before this trip I had only ridden regular taxis in the city. My first new experience was on this boat taxi. They're not very expensive, but they are crowded! You get on and then somebody comes around shaking a tube of coins. You tell them where you are going and pay them the appropriate fare. Mr. Korn took care of all of that. I'm glad because I had no idea where we were going.

We walked around some streets that are frequented mainly by tourists. I think some of these places are probably pretty wild at night, but during the daytime it seemed like a normal area to me. There were lots of western restaurants and foreigners walking around, but the shopping seemed to be pretty much the same.
Rusty spotted this sign. I need to find out why it says Susie on it. In Thai it literally says street people walk...usually refers to a street people walk down and shop. At least that's what this walking street was...like the one we have in our city also. The walking street in Pattaya is NOT like that so be warned in case you ever go there.
This is the hotel we stayed in. We were crossing a long bridge at about sunset, and we thought this was a good view of the hotel. We were going to relax for a bit until it was time to go pick up Bryan and Dion from the airport.

Bryan and Dion got in late that evening. Kaimook was going to share a room with Dion, but we couldn't wake her. Housekeeping let Dion in and everyone was settled for the night resting up for a day of touring BKK.