Bangkok with C

So I have been in Bangkok since Monday night, getting a visa and visiting a friend. I hate this city and if C hadn’t been living here I would not have stayed past Tuesday. But I did wind up doing some fun things while C was busy at work all week.

On Tuesday I spent the day running errands and being generally frustrated. I had to fight with the damn Chinese Embassy to give me a visa. First they didn’t mention anywhere that you had to have 2 copies of the forms or all of your travel paperwork with you. Luckily I had grabbed all my flight and hotel paperwork as a ‘just in case’ right before I walked out of the door. Sadly, I only had one copy of the application printed out so I had to quickly scribble in the information again on a new form. I barely got my application turned in before they shut down the office, and stopped accepting applications for the day.

Then I went to the train station to buy my ticket up to Chiang Mai (for elephant camp) and learned that the only sleeper train they had was going to get in 2 hours too late. So, I will be going to Chiang Mai by train in a reclining chair in the air con…I’ve been sleeping on the hard floor for 2 weeks now so this might actually be comfortable.

While I was at the train station I met another American and we decided to team up to try to find the big gold Buddha in China town. Once we got there I discovered that I had forgotten to throw my camera into my bag!!!! After walking around the temple we went to go hunt down some food before I had to go back to pick up my visa before the embassy shut down at 4:30.

Wednesday was much more relaxing. I spent the whole day walking around C’s neighborhood and shopping at The Mall 1 &2.

The neighbors' Pampers Cat

On Thursday I went on another excursion. This time I went to Suan Luang Rama IX Park. It was a trip to get there (it took almost an hour). The park was huge and gorgeous! It was well worth the adventure to get there and it was super peaceful. There were hardly any people there so I almost felt like I had the whole park to myself.

I spent Friday shopping for C’s late birthday party. I went out and bought her a stuffed bear (which she loved) and some cheese cake. After she got back from work we went out for dinner and ate a ton of fish and papaya salad. When we got back C was SOOOOOO excited when she saw the pink bear sitting on her pillow pile.

Yesterday, we went to Chatuchak Market for the afternoon. We walked around and did some shopping. On the way home there was a huge traffic jam so I was able to convince C to take a 30 minute walk from the airport link back to her apartment…she still thinks I’m crazy since I’ve done that walk 3 times now.

Tonight I leave for Chiang Mai and I start Elephant Camp tomorrow morning!

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