Skybars are freakishly expensive (Day 3)

Monks in Silom

DAY 3 - 1ST FEBRUARY 2013
In Kuala Lumpur, it's a public holiday. In Bangkok, it's payday. And it's Friday and the Thais will definitely be out and about at some point. I woke up pretty early for someone on vacation. I texted Gemma to plan our day ahead. We agreed that we would head up to Chinatown to check it out.

If you've been to a lot of Chinatowns across the globe, this one would probably not interest you that much. But Petaling Street being the ONLY Chinatown I've ever seen, I was looking forward to spending a few hours in Chinatown. Also, I would have to brace myself for the sea of people I'm about to endure.

A little bit of Tandemic in BKK.

We met up at Silom and made our way to Hua Lamphong. We walked for 15 minutes before we were in the middle of Chinatown. Or rather Yaowarat. We went food hunting because I was getting hungry as fuck - which is not really a new thing, I'm always hungry - so we settled on some noodles in a restaurant because apparently, Chinatown comes to life in the afternoon. Trip Advisor said so. The place is sprawling to say the least. It was really a huge maze of a market and Gemma was pretty excited to see little escalators in individual shops in the alleys.

Chinatown market

We walked around the alleys simply because it became impossible just to backtrack or find our way around. We didn't actually buy anything - I was on a budget and Gemma was on a 4-month SEA tour so she didn't wanna have to haul shit around - so we walked around for a couple of hours more until I got hungry.

Again.

And I wanted to hunt for dim sum.

Which didn't happen because Gemma's sandals snapped. So we backtracked to the market and pretty much snagged the first pair of flip flops we saw. I decided to forego the dim sum hunt and text Nadine to ask her where she was.

MBK crossway

We made our way to MBK, a mall next to the National Stadium. Nadine was looking for a dress to wear to a wedding. But I was hungry -- I didn't get my dim sum, also known as not having lunch. MBK had fast food joints and I didn't really feel like hitting a maccas. So we went out and walked around for some street food. But the weather was crazy hot (yeah, weird for a girl who grew up in the same climate to complain of the heat -- YOU NEVER GET USED TO IT) so we decided it was spoiled travellers' day and retreated into an air conditioned cafe.

Food was good though, even if it was on a slightly pricey side.

I was developing quite a headache so I decided to retreat back to home base. Went home, popped a Panadol, showered and just rested.

That is, of course, until Jeff called and asked "hey you ready to go out?"

I checked myself. Dress - check. Headache - gone. Sprayed on some perfume and I was ready for the (yet another) night out. We headed to Lebua State Tower to meet up his friends at the skybar on the 64th floor. My irrational fear of heights began to kick in but I kept it contained. I looked at the menu and almost felt like base jumping off the top of the tower.

There was no way I was gonna spend 195B on a bottle of water. And that was the cheapest drink among the 300B beers and 500B cocktails. So I just decided to soak in the view. It was pretty though.

After the bar, we walked down the street, supposedly heading to another bar but at some point changed our minds and parted ways with Jeff's friends who wanted to head to Khao San. Not keen to make that trip, Jeff and I hunt for some food. He took me to a nice small restaurant, before heading to Ratchathewi to meet up with his friends.

What went on after that was just hours of fun and really awesome conversation. It was a good first Friday night out of town.