I love this place!!

Some of my friends told me that I should spend as little time in Bangkok as possible and go visit other parts of the country. I absolutely plan to see other parts of the country, but I am in love with this city!! Maybe the people who gave me that advice don't like big cities, but I do. There's something so vibrant about them, a living, breathing pulse that you can feel. Today I took a cab and then the Skytrain to Siam Center and the Paragon, a ginormous mall complex. I think this is the biggest one here, but there are big malls all over the place in this part of the city. Apparently this is it, everyone comes in from other parts of Thailand to shop, so miraculously all of these places stay in business. The air con was on full blast, Christmas music was being piped in, and Christmas decorations were everywhere. It felt like home in a way. The funny thing is, I generally don't like hanging out at the mall back home, but I was lovin' this place. Maybe it's just the familiarity of it all. Maybe that's why I like Bangkok so much, because it's so modern and reminds me of home, in a New York kind of way.

Not surprisingly, the food court was equally impressive in this place. (OK, it's time to admit it, I'm exactly like my dog, totally driven by food!) It's been a while since I've been in a full-service grocery store and this place has what's called the Gourmet Market. It's like Whole Foods... on crack. Amazing. I just walked up and down the aisles like the proverbial kid in a candy store, admiring all the products. They have everything - Asian foods, import foods, fresh produce, and on and on. It made me wish I had a reason to buy groceries. I want to live here just for this market alone.

I left the mall and explored a bit, but later returned to the megaplex there to watch a movie. Some things here also have New York prices, I found, like my movie ticket which cost $18. Ouch! What a treat, though, a comfortably air conditioned theater with seats nicer than any furniture I've ever owned, and an enormous screen. They don't mess around in Bangkok with their entertainment. There was a good 20 minutes or so of previews and ads and, surprisingly, a short video set to the national anthem during which you were supposed to stand to honor the king. Wild. I looked around to see if everyone was actually doing this, and they were, so I joined in of course. On the Skytrain ride back I was amused to see that instead of the usual "please offer this seat to the elderly or disabled" signs you often find in metros, here it says "please offer this seat to monks". Awesome.


Thai Christmas decorations outside the mall.


A cute Thai kid toting a not-so-cute fake gun.