Day 2
Mar. 20, Sunday

The previous night passed peacefully. We had our TV on all night, and when I woke up in the morning, it was Pirates of Caribbean on air. We arrived in the nightfall the past day, and if the temperature was a little cooled down then, it was scorching when the sun was up.

The breakfast at Royal was American buffet, with toast, ham, noodle, milk, a good number of various fruit juice and other stuff, very good indeed. As an added benefit, it also provided bean milk and fried rice. The price was included in the room rate. So we couldn't miss it. In the dining hall, we could hardly find an Asian face and, pretty as Ivy and myself are (shame on me), we got a fair number of turning heads.

After breakfast we had to check out as we couldn't extend our room for the same rate, and, when we toured Khao San Road the previous evening, we saw many hostels there with pretty neon signs. We headed to one called "Khao San Palace Inn". From the nicely decorated front desk we knew that a room with aircon was 650 baht, which seemed pretty good. So we checked in. But things in it was totally different from Royal. No towel, no tub, cover is simply a thin sheet and no closet for our clothes! And what's more, no breakfast. But we were too proud to turn back, and didn't have time to.

Ivy and I put down our baggages and set off to the well known Chatuchak (also spelled as "Jatujak") weekend market, which boasted the largest of its kind in the world. It opens daily, only there are most boothes openning on Sundays. Again, the "meter-taxi" driver asked for, instead of metering us, 150 baht, and what could we say when we couldn't wait to go?

Chatuchak was in a disorder at first sight, and full of people selling and buying, but 30 minutes later we grew keen on it as it had so much to offer, from clothes, bags to all kinds of ornaments and artware, though some of them are made in China. Time slipped fast with the two of us falling deep in the boothes. We tried to haggle every item coming into our eyes but without much success. A pair of handmade flocky dolls' asking price was 360B and we got them 350B.

It was almost 4 pm when we realized it was time to go. Lunch was a quick and makeshift one in the market, and we should get going to have a decent dinner before we could shake off our shabby feather to make for the lady boy show at night.

We left the market with our hands full but still feeling sorry to leave as there seemed to be so much we had missed. Not far from Chatuchak there is the Skytrain station, the northmost station of one of the two lines is called Mo Chit. Skytrain is actually the same as the light rail in Shanghai, but I like the name, sky-train, sounds like a train coming down from heaven ;)

From Mo Chit to Siam (the business center of BKK) it costs 30B each and down in Siam we found ourselves in the middle of luxurious shopping malls connecting one with another. Unlike the riverside area where we accomodated, which are well reserved area with old living patterns, there are tall buildings with large intruding ads. right to your face in Siam. You can compare Siam to Nanjing Rd. and Huaihai Rd. in Shanghai. Having toured for another hour we both found ourselves unable to move a step further, and decided to sit down in an icecream shop within the department store. But we ended up in Starbucks when we couldn't find a free table for icecream.

After dinner we regained our energy and started off to Asia Hotel, which offered lady boy cabaret in BKK. We changed some dollars to Baht along the street at 38.16 and headed for Asia. Arriving at 7:30pm we were well in time to buy the ticket of the show which was 1000B each with free soft drinks, and then we waited in the lobby for the time. There was big, comfortable sofa in dark red (or maroon? couldn't remember) color in the lobby, and we sank ourselves in them and looked at people coming and going around, this time it was all different from other instances, people were almost all Asian. And you could just vaguely tell that they came from Japan, China and Korea, and probably Taiwan and Hongkong.

The lady boy show was hilarious with its music and very pleasing to the eyes with impressive light effects. It was divided into different sections offering Chinese/ Japanese/ Hollywood/ Thai style of dances. Chinese songs were sang, not by the lady boys but canned, for, as we were later told, their voice chords were not operated to deliver female sound. We sat at the first row to the right side of the stage and I couldn't comment further on what was going on afterwards. As I was too busy recording and photographing every detail of it, and, alas, only forgot to enjoy them performing! The cabaret lasted about an hour and a half and we just couldn't have enough of it. Ivy and I took two pictures each with the lady boys we liked and with the emcee, a feminine male but not a lady boy (he was not a distaste for some strange reason for us to take picture with). When taking pictures with them, don't forget to tip.

When we were out of Asia it was all dark, and late, but luck struck us the moment we waved stop a taxi, its meter was ON. It cost us some 80B getting back to Khao San road and the stalls there were still operating, so our shopping went on...
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