26.7.24

This mornings breakfast was fried pork mince, rice and crinkly cut vegetables. I gave my dragon fruit chunks to John. The rest of it was delicious. The lovely filter coffee maker was out of order. The instant was dreadful as was Johns hot chocolate.

We set off for MBK mall as that must be the one we loved before.

We walked the 4km as the weather was good.

That definitely wasn’t the right place either but we enjoyed the variety on the 6th floors, apart from the lady on the phones and tablets floor, she pounces as people get off the escalator. They were all very pushy, but to be expected when your competing with about 50 other stalls on that floor, all selling the same things.

We spent ages in the food court trying to choose lunch, then gave up as we basically weren’t hungry.

The whole time we were in Australia John was searching for running shoes and android tablets on Facebook market place. Yesterday he found someone selling a tablet.

He arranged to meet him at Lotus food hall, stop E9, On nut, at 12.45pm.

Off we went onto the skytrain, bought tickets, went 3 stops and realised we were going the wrong way.

2 stops backwards to the Siam stop where we diverted to the green line.

We were a little early but were soon spotted by the Sicilian tablet wheeler dealer. Transaction complete we couldn’t stop him talking. He was trying to convince us to get a condo nearby, it’s the cheapest and most convenient area in Bangkok.

There is no way we would ever swap our lives in Fethiye to live in the mayhem of any big city.

We were hungry by now and went round Lotus food hall several times before settling on massuman curries, 2 pineapple turnovers and amazing mango smoothies. Maybe this would be a good place to live after all.

Google told John that we could  get a number 23 bus almost all the way back to our room.

We waited an hour for the elusive 23 bus. There was a youngish woman in a filthy, dirty dress. Her hair was a mass of knots. She was hovering at the bus stop for as long as we waited. She moved closer and stood behind me. It was unnerving, part of me wanted to smile and give her some money. The other part of me was scared that she was planning to murder me. It’s very sad, we’ve seen a multitude of beggars, people with disabilities and homeless people. She had food in the typical plastic bag containers in one of her carrier bags. I think the other bag was probably bits and pieces she’d collected from bins. Very sad.

It had started to rain hard, by now it was about 3.30pm. Woohooo, bus 23 arrived.

The conductor said it doesn’t go to Khao San area. We need to change to number 72 in a short while. He kindly told us when and we jumped off and into the 72 behind us.

I’m currently writing this from the 2nd bus. I can’t get my head around a 45 minute walk there and it being nearly 6pm now!! We’ve seen nothing we recognise yet and its been well over an hour. Good thing each bus was just 8 thb each per person per journey.

We finally recognised an area close to our room. It was 7. 30pm. We were so hot and sweaty.

Neither of us were particularly hungry, so we bought beer and snacks.

Lying in a room with air con and no traffic noise was heaven. People who love Bangkok have clearly never waited for a number 23 bus.