I made it into Bangkok

I know i'm a few days behind but I'm trying to get all caught up with my postings. So I made it into Bangkok. I got in at 12:30 mid day on Nov 27. I arrived in the new Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, which is their huge brand new airport that was surrounded with political issues during construction. It's now up and running and I honestly wasn't too overly impressed with it.
It just looks like a big concrete and glass building. Very grey really. Apparently they're still putting the finishing touches on it so maybe they have to still make it look pretty.

Ok I just did some googling to find pictures of the airport and maybe it does look more impressive than what I was able to see in my quick arrival. Apparently it's now the largest airport terminal in the world! It also has the tallest control tower in the world.

Once I got there Sam (the driver) found me. I was lucky enough to have Darrell and Lynn's driver pick me up so he could take me back to their apartment. They offered to let me stay here for a bit until I get settled into a place. I must say it's pretty nice. The address is:

Jaspal Residential 2
Penthouse Suite 1
82 Soi 23 Sukhumvit Rd
Klong-Tonnua Wattana
Bangkok, Thailand 10110

They live in the penthouse suite with 2 floors. It's nice, I must say. They also have a housekeeper come every day (6 days) a week and clean the apartment. She does laundry, sweeps, mops and does all this each and every day. The apartment is always spotless. Wow how I'd love to have someone cleaning my place each day.

So for a few days afterwards, I was overwhelmed again and kinda depressed. I dunno, I mean I was happy to be here but it finally sunk in that I'm here, not in Canada anymore. I was all alone in this big city to do whatever I wanted. It was a scary feeling. So I spent the first few days exploring around the larger areas; I went to MBK Center. This mall is great. Its five huge floors of anything you can imagine. It's not like a normal mall with nice shops and whatnot, no its all kind of random people selling whatever it is they can (clothes, cel phones, bootleg music/movies/software, copies of every brand of clothing you can imagine, etc). All the prices are negotiable (as is the way with almost everything in thailand and is a part of the culture to bargain). And, they have a huge food court with every type of food you can imagine. The Pad Thai is to die for. I'll make a special trip from the skytrain to the mall just for their pad thai. It was the first thing I did when I got off the plane was go to MBK for pad thai. Heh anyways...

So after I got my fash-on at malls for a few days, I got a hold of Julie and Sacha (both Canadian friends from Kelowna but also in Bangkok) and we all went out for dinner to "Sizzler". This is a "westernized" restaurant. I quote westernized because they never quite get it right, the food is usually close, but it's missing something. Oh well, it seems close enough to the real thing for a lot of people. After going to Sizzler, we went to a night market. Now a night market is different from most things we'd see in Canada. A night market is a huge gathering of people selling random stuff again (mostly all clothes) in an open space in the city. Oh yeah this whole time we're in a place called "Pinklao". It probably won't mean much to you other than that it's an area closer to Julie and somewhat outside of the Bangkokian area. That was fun!

I can't remember if I did this next part before or after Pinklao, I think it was before. I went to a mall called The Emporium. This is a nicer, chic designer mall with lots of very unique and interesting stuff. The prices seem to be all fixed as with most higher end malls. The reason I came here today was because I needed a cel phone, or as asians call it, a "mobile". I knew this was going to be expensive because I'm picky when it comes to technology. I looked around for a while checking out Nokia's store. Sony had a store too. I was almost going to buy a Sony phone but looked at the new Samsung Slider SGH D-900 and had to buy it. It's a great phone with so much functionality. It slides to have a small profile. It comes with a 3.0 megapixel camera, a built in MP3 player with stereo headphones that double as a headset if you get a call. I was quite impressed with the features, including the little things you don't normally look for in a phone but are glad you have when you use it. I paid 15,290 baht for the phone (about $466 CND) which includes a sim card with AIS 1-2 Call. The cool thing with Asian cel markets is that you can buy a SIMcard for about $8 which gives you a phone number with the company. You then load and "top-up" your service with pre-paid cards that you can buy at almost any store in Thailand. If you don't like the cel company, you can hop to another mobile provider by buying a new $8 SIM card. If you ever buy a new phone, you insert your SIM card and immediately your contacts and phone number carry over with the SIM card. It really is a smart idea, too bad Canada's phones are locked.