Five more sleeps and home!

Ya think we are starting to get anxious about coming home? Totally! Wow. And we originally thought that we would pass by Christmas, have Lena come to BKK because she gets two weeks off now and only one for reading week. Can you imagine. Man am I ever glad we decided to come home at this time. It just feels so right to be sharing this with all of you and being able to come home to talk and see you all. Thanks Leenz for sticking to your guns. All Deeds and I ever wanted to do was to spend Christmas with Lena and now it has turned out to be a home coming of sorts.

As I sit and pen this latest effort it is raining very nicely in BKK. Might clear up later in the day which will make it steam bath city, but a good day to tell you about our last long weekend in BKK. The weekend before we head home took a few twists right at the end. We had decided that we should get out to play a game at BGC and since Friday was a holiday what better time to do that. Ooops. Waited to long to get a tee time. Best I could do was 2:45, which meant only 9 holes, so we kinda bailed. Tried to set up a game for Sunday but that put us into another reorg of plans so no golf was played on the weekend. I am hoping to get out tomorrow, Tuesday for a game. Will have to check it out. I cut my hand washing dishes on Sunday. Darn wine glasses are some flimsy is came apart in my hand. Nice little gash, lots of blood and some decent sympathy from Deeds.

But I digress. The weekend played out like this. Friday, since we had no golf meant a classic BKK stand by replacement activity > Shopping!!!!
I have made one simple request for a Christmas present, a new putter. I love my white hot, but it has been six years and every golfer knows that new equipment means lower scores! So I have been scouting Canadian websites for prices to see if I can save the tax and buy one here. So going down to Thaniya Plaza to check out the golf stores was on our list to do on Friday.
Deeds had volunteered a trip to the famous thai silk company Jim Thompson. She even had a coupon for the factory Christmas sale. Unfortunatly the factory was a 30 minute bus ride after the last stop on the BTS Skytrain. Not a ride that either of us was looking forward to. So we changed it up. We hit the pool and tried to brown up, then out to the street for some great Phad See Ewe (Siew). The folks across the street are awesome and have become a weekend favourite for us.
From a good lunch we jumped on the MRT. The plaza that we were looking for is located at the corner of Lumphini Park and Rama IV Road. No trouble getting there. Got off the train walked up to the street. Then we commence to put our left foot in, take our left foot out, somehow we turned ourselves all about with the resulting hokey pokey costing us about 45 minutes. Man it was unbelievable. We had our phones out, with GPS signals flying all over the place we still managed to walk in the wrong direction. Holy mother or pearl. We got to one corner and there is this other farang asking a tuk tuk driver what street he is on. The tuk tuk drivers here always start or answer with "Where you going misser" Where you want to go misser" Well what we heard the driver tell the guy was, more or less, if you want to know where you are get in, if you no get in then you someplace else misser. So of course we put our right foot in and took our right foot out, and turned around and starting walking the other way thinking that he was telling him that the street we were on was not the street we were looking for......... Now I am getting lost all over again. Suffice to say we were not happy puppies that we couldn't find this major BKK shopping plaza.

Bright side, as we walked along finally on track and low and behold there is a Jim Thompson retail outlet. Beautiful silk everything. Expensive yes. But sooo beautiful. Would have made great Christmas gifts, ;-) but we were headed for the golf shop, remember.

Thaniya Plaza . So with only one more little stroll to far down the street, and some help from the locals we finally found the plaza. Actually, if we had looked across the street when we got off the MRT, we would have seen it. Totally unbelievable experience. Not alot of fun.

Bright side, I found the putter I was looking for and it will be in the bag after Christmas. Thanks Deeds!!
 

We were now pooped and homeward bound. (Side bar: There is a great outdoor market at Thaniya called Patpong Night market. A return is inevitable.) On the train home we decided to take a walk down Sukhumvit one station away from ours and see what the street vendors had to offer. (I was actually looking for some Titleist golf shirts I had seen earlier in the week. Like Deeds said. "Oh yeah, you need another golf shirt Jer!!"). We got off at Nana and walked back. Found all kinds of stuff that will make its way back to Canada. Bags and packages in each hand we stopped off at Scuda, our favourite basic thai restaurant in the area. And then an unbeknownst tradition developed at this eatery. You will do this when you are here. It goes like this. If you are unsure or do not announce what you want before you get to Scuda the menu falls into the hands of milady. Deeds has done this on at least three occasions now at this particular establishment and she must do it every time. What great choices she makes. Especially the beer at the beginning, no seriously, great food groupings and different dishes. Not always same same. No pressure Deeds, keep up the good work.

The major attraction for our weekend was on Saturday. We had booked a full day tour to Ayutthaya. I will have many pictures on the Picasa web site soon, and another blog all about that wonderful trip. This is one that you will also go on. Hope this finds you all very well.
Sawadee Krup