Happy New Year

Happy New Year!
We have spent the past 4 nights in Bangkok and had the best time. After our month in India, Chris and I decided to splurge a bit and got ourselves a really nice room. Money in this city can really go along way and for less money than we spent at any of the seedy motels we stayed at on the US west coast, we were able to book into a 5 star hotel! Let me tell you, money well spent! I don’t think I been so excited the whole trip as I was checking into our room. I mean, you can walk on the carpet in the room, and not feel like you need to disinfect your feet after!!  Here is the hotel:

Bangkok is a fantastic city. I visited it 7 years ago and remember it being dirty, stuffy and poor, and really just wanting to leave it and get out to some fresh air. Well on the contrary. Today Bangkok is a vibrant, bustling, clean city. We are staying in a great neighbourhood, where we can walk to the modern sky train and reach any point of the city. We also happen to be really close to 3 or 4 major shopping malls. Unfortunately most of these malls are full of stores that we couldn’t dream of affording anything in the stores, but if you are looking for luxury retail Bangkok has you covered. Chris and I personally spent more time at the mall across the road, where you can buy fake anything. Much better pricing!

We did the typically tourist route, saw the beautiful grand palace, giant reclining buddha, and took a boat down the Chao Phraya river. We also managed to take in a cabaret… Which was one of the best/worst things we have ever seen. Ok, so the drag queens were beautiful. Some of them you could absolutely not tell that they were men. The costumes were stunning and if they were just putting on a fashion show it would have been brilliant. Unfortunately they weren’t and the actual talent (or direction) part of the show was lacking. Definitely the worst combination of choreography (if you could call it that) and lip-syncing (if you could call it that) that I have ever seen. But it was an interesting night out…

Our most favorite night was New Years Eve. Chris and I decided to find a restaurant near the Central World Plaza, Bangkok’s “Time Square”. We planned on having dinner and then heading out to party with hundreds of thousands of Thai people on the streets. It was a huge party! After dinner, as we were heading down to the ground floor to go outside, the hostess asked us if we wanted to go down or go up to the 55th floor…. Uh, up I guess. Why not check out the view right? So we were directed to a different bank of elevators and ended up in a very swanky restaurant on the 55th floor! We decided to go outside and take in the skyline. Lots of people were eating outside and we seemed quite out of place, so I just kept walking and took a set of stairs up to the roof top patio where a huge party was going on! It was amazing. We could see the view of the whole city! The party going on at CenterWorld Plaza looked so cool from that high up. All of the Thai people were wearing these flashing headbands so the plaza and all of the streets around it were flashing in every colour! You could tell it was gridlock down there, so we made the difficult decision to stay at the party. It was an amazing night and we could see the fireworks being set off from all angles of the city. After chatting with another couple for a while we learned we had totally crashed the party and tickets were around $100 each!!! Whoops! We rang in the New Year dancing on the dance floor on the roof top patio of such and incredible building in such an amazing city. It was truly a night to remember!

Tomorrow we leave Bangkok and head west to the city Kanchanaburi for a couple of days of exploring central Thailand before we head south to the islands. Although we will miss Bangkok we are looking forward to the chang of scenery.
Hope you all had a great New Years Eve! Chris and I both agree that 2010 was our best year yet. I can’t imagine what 2011 might have in store!
Love to you all,
Ashlyn and Chris