It looks like the day has finally arrived. Payments have cleared both sides of the ocean and our friends at Asian Tiger have informed us they will deliver our goods to our new address this morning. Yehaaa! Because I am off to Phuket on Thursday morning to see Kara and Julie play some volley ball. Diane gets to unpack!
The move is just in time as well. I like The Somerset. You are pampered here. Great pool. Amazing amount of sun. And Sukhumvit Soi 16 is a great neighbourhood. Some great upscale restaurants like Kuppa and Ten Sui where we went last night. But we need to settle in. Have a place we can call ours.
Restaurant Review: Ten Sui is Japanese. Featuring sushi, shashimi, miso soups, tempura, etc. etc. The restaurant itself is very beautiful. A gracious looking place that is set back from the street. They have misting ponds that appear as if you are in the mountains and a flowing stream in front of the building to the front door. Very elegant. The food was for me surprisingly good. I am not a sushi guy. I like sushi a little bit but fell away from it because of the extra glutoneous rice they use. But here in the land of rice, you must get with the program. My only complaint with this restaurant as with many if not all if BKK is the air conditioning. Some like to show their prowess with buying big fast cars, in BKK it is having the AC on to the point that the customers nearly freeze to death. Ten Sui is a winner in that category. It was freaking cold. (Yes colder than George and Tammy's back deck on Melton. If I coulda I would have been wearing my purple coat.). For those who are coming and enjoy good Japanese food make sure you put Ten Sui on your list of places to go. I hear that the lunch is probably the best as it features a set plate that is reasonably priced and a good representation of different dishes because the dinner is a tad expensive
A Walking Tour Through The Old Farang Quarter
Back on the weekend we took a walking tour out of one of the many Thailand travel books we seem to have laying around. This one had a good mix of different things that make BKK into the cosmopolitan place it is. On this tour we saw a buddhist wat (temple), which is no surprise in BKK, a muslim mosque and the largest catholic cathedral in BKK. The tour we did added about half hour of extra walking as is our want to do. We meandered down a major street at 8:30 in the morning on Sunday. A very quiet day in BKK and a good one to get out into the downtown core.
The first destination on the walk was the River City Shopping complex. Now you will get sick of these books talking about places to shop in BKK. There are hundreds if not thousands of malls as we call them. Of course many here are grand. The Eaton Centre holds it's own but may be a little tired compared to these. But shopping compleses are part of the program.
River City sits on the Chao Phraya River. This main river in Thailand runs right through BKK. It was my first glimpse of the river. It is a back and forth river. Running hard into the ocean at low tide and nearly flowing backwards at high tide. River traffic is abundant with many ferries to take you across or up and down. There are many piers along the river and you can hop scotch all the way along. There are also the famous long tail boats of thailand. These boats are taxis, sightseers, etc. You have to see these to believe them. The motor sits right out on top of the stern shaft. The long tail boats navigate in Bangkok canals or near beaches. They use a car motor engine to be propelled. They run quite fast, loud and are a nice way to discover the canals around Bangkok or Thai coasts.
And like every taxi in BKK, when they see farang they pull over, even on the river. I was standing on the verandah at the Oriental Hotel and they came buzzing over. While walking around we were shooing away tuk tuk drivers every ten minutes. It gets to be a little annoying that you can't walk down the street 100 feet without someone asking you where are you goin mister. I take you for 50 baht 2 hours. Were are you goin mister!
From River City we expolered some side soi and saw great antiques and ideas for furnishing the apartment. We walked on, saw a glimpse of the Portugese and French Embassy. We continued on to another area of the walk were we saw the Haroon Moseque as well as Assumption Cathedral. Assumption was a very large area encompassing schools and other buildings in the complex.
Nestled right next door and only a step away from the river was an abandon building that a local said closed about 30 years ago. This building housed the old East Asiatic Company. A walk around the corner from there and we were at the Oriental Hotel. This is an upscale place. At one point I had to duck into the washroom. No paper towels here. There were linen hapkins to wipe your hands with. Major cool!
We finished off the day strolling back to the Mass Rapid Transit station and heading on home. Even had enough time at the end of this day to head to the pool for a refreshing swim. Great day!
Sawadee Krup
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