August 28 (Tuesday)
Mystery Fruit
On Tuesday we decided to try out the breakfast buffet provided by our hotel. The spread was pretty good, including staples like pancakes, French toast, eggs, sausage, and bacon along with a noodle dish and some stir-fried vegetables. They also offered fruit like pineapple and what we later learned to be green mango (our analysis at the time was more along the lines of "Is this apple?" <takes a bite> "No, pretty sure that's not apple.").
Breakfast handled, we set out on our major objective for the day: buying suits. Southeast Asia tends to be a good place to get high-quality tailored suits at a very reasonable price, and Bangkok is no exception. Nikki was able to recommend Bangkok Fashions, so Sukhumvit was our destination.
Bangkok has a pretty nice public transit system, a major part of which is the BTS Skytrain. Unfortunately, our hotel happened to be located in one of the few areas the skytrain doesn't reach. We could have taken a taxi or tuk-tuk, but WikiTravel said we could catch a water taxi down a canal, so why wouldn't we try that? The walk afforded us a great view of the river and the Rama VIII bridge, let us check out an old fort (Phra Sumen Fort), and also take in the Mahajetsadabodin Royal Pavilion, which would subsequently become a landmark for nearly every taxi ride back to our hotel.
Cruising
WikiTravel said that we could catch a ride from near the Royal Pavilion, so once we got there and snapped a few pictures we headed for the canal and almost immediately found a dock with a long, narrow boat waiting. There wasn't really any signage to indicate that we were in the right place, so when we saw a guy who had an "I am involved in the operation of a water taxi" look about him we asked if this boat went to Sukhumvit. He answered in the affirmative, and that was good enough for us, so in we went.
After a while waiting for more passengers a few people who looked like they were running the show donned helmets and stepped onto the sides of the boat, cast off the lines, and got us underway.
One thing we hadn't established at this point was how payment worked. The dude at the dock hadn't made any indication that we should give him money, so we'd just figured that it would work itself out. That ended up being spot on, since a few minutes into the trip the helmeted folks started making their way down the boat collecting fares and handing out tickets. It appeared that everyone was handing up a 20 baht note, so we did the same and got back a ticket along with 8 baht in change. You'd never know that we were totally winging it.
A lot of the structures right on the canal were either residential or industrial in nature, but you could also see high-rises off in the distance. There were a lot of stops along the canal (when there was only one person getting on or off they made what I would characterize as "rolling stops"), so it seems like a pretty solid way to get around. We ended up having to transfer once in order to get all the way to Sukhumvit, but that was as easy as hopping off one boat, walking down the dock, and boarding another. The stops weren't particularly well marked, so knowing where to get off was a bit of a challenge, but having GPS and downloaded maps made it considerably easier.
Pants with Stripes and Cutaway Coat, Perfect Fits
Once we arrived in Sukhumvit we needed to find the tailor. This actually proved fairly difficult because, although we knew which street the tailor was on, that street was shaped sort of like a "Y" and the numbering seemed kind of inconsistent. As a result, we wandered up and down the street for far longer than I'd care to admit, but it did give us the opportunity to see some fun sights and figure out that a street address of "155/33" didn't mean we had to do long division, but rather that it was a combination of the building and office number.
Once we found the shop the suit-buying commenced. This was my first time buying a tailored suit, but Harry and Jesse made it a very painless process. Once we'd selected the fabrics, picked out a style, and had our measurements taken we scheduled a fitting for the following Monday and were on our way.
Sukhumvit is noted as being a good place for international cuisine, so when we spotted a south Indian restaurant just down the block from the tailor it seemed like the perfect choice. Charlie has actually spent some time living in India, so he took care of ordering and I can't complain about the results. Another thing I can't complain about was the way it started raining shortly after we sat down and it stopped shortly before we finished. Considering we weren't carrying rain gear this worked out extraordinarily well.
Small Victories
We didn't have anything else pressing on the agenda for the day, so we opted to explore Sukhumvit for a while. Before we could get far, though, we happened into a small adventure. I was trying to send a text and it just would not go through. It occurred to me that the problem was most likely that my SIM card was in need of topping off. "No problem," I thought, Nikki was kind enough to provide us with a code to load up the account. I pulled it out of my wallet and found that it was 100% in Thai. Not a lick of English on the thing. Alright, well, I like a challenge.
The 16-digit code I had to enter was obvious enough. The real question was where I had to enter it. Interspersed with the Thai were a few four digit number starting with 93. All of the numbers involved in activating the SIM were four digits and started with 93, so that seemed promising. I dialed the first one and got a short message in Thai. I waited a moment and the message repeated. It seemed like it was prompting me to do something, so I keyed in the code and listened. Nothing. The message didn't repeat again, but it also didn't advance. Taking an educated guess I hit the # key, at which point I got another message in Thai and the phone hung up. Seconds later I got a text informing me that my account had been credited. Me: 1, The Thai Language: 0
A Park, Centrally Located
We continued our exploration and ran across stalls selling all sort of stuff: DVDs, t-shirts, uh, "massagers." Tons of stuff. Our map showed that there was a pretty sizable park in the area, so we decided to head for that. It was pretty much due South of us, but that didn't mean getting in was easy. We went down what may have been a closed road (dudes on scooters were totally going around the fence, so it's legit, right?) and ended up in what was clearly someone's neighborhood, but on we pressed until we found the entrance to Benjakiti Park.
It's a beautiful park with a big ol' lake in the middle and a track for bikers and joggers running around the perimeter. Being able to see tall buildings while standing in the middle of a relatively forested area made it vaguely reminiscent of New York's Central Park, only much hotter. After finishing a lap around the lake we figured it was about time to be getting back to the hotel.
All Aboard
We were going to be catching an overnight train to Chiang Mai, but before we headed for the station we wanted to try to nail down some more of our trip. You see, we'd only booked our hotel for the first few nights in Bangkok and the train to Chiang Mai and everything after that was still up in the air. We liked New Siam II, so the first thing we did was book a room for the weekend when we'd be back in Bangkok. After that we set up shop in the hotel's lobby and used their Wi-Fi and my laptop to look up some flights. Finding ones that fit our schedule was easy enough, but getting them booked was a bit of a pain. We ran into a situation where the travel site with the best rates just would not accept our credit cards. Thankfully we were able to find another site that was almost as good. Once we had our travel arrangements set for the rest of the trip it was time to head to the train station.
Catching a cab to Bangkok Railway Station was a piece of cake and the station itself is quite nice. They've got two stories of shops and eateries which gave us an opportunity to stock up on questionable snacks (Lobster Hot Plate Lays, anyone?). I believe this was also the first time on the trip where we encountered squat toilets. I actually did see one western-style toilet, but the previous occupant had done unspeakable things in there, so squat toilet it was.
Before long our train showed up on the departures board which meant that it was time to go get ourselves settled in. It was going to be about a 15 hour trip, so rather than general seating we opted for a shared compartment in an air conditioned car. Essentially it's two benches facing each other, each with a fold-down bed above. Cozy, but comfortable.
Not long after we had gotten ourselves situated our bunkmates arrived. Sharing quarters is definitely a gamble since you can't control who's going to be sleeping mere feet away from you, but I dare say that we hit the jackpot: a young French couple (François and Nathalie) who spoke excellent English. He was a hardware engineer working for Peugeot Citroën and she...actually, I don't think we ever caught what she did, but they were both incredibly nice and well-traveled. Rolling with Charlie was a real boon here, because his knowledge of international goings-on let me just keep quiet and never have to reinforce the stereotype that Americans don't pay attention to the rest of the world.
As the train sped along into the rainy night (another instance where we dodged the rain) we prepared for bed. Tomorrow we would tackle Chiang Mai.