Yesterday we spend the morning decreasing our load and packing up…we booked a new place to stay on Agoda.com and headed for the skytrain with our less bulky bags. Although the walk wasn’t far…we were sweating like animals by the time we got there.
We took the sky train to the other (east side) of Bangkok and found the Sawasdee Sukhumvit Inn. It is part of a 13 hotel chain with the budget traveler in mind. Our room is a deluxe (for $25 a night…including air, hot water, a tv, a double bed and breakfast…we were AOK with this). We settled in, sprawled out and waited about an hour for the air to cool off our room and us…while I did my best to think of our room when traveling in Bali which had no air and moggies flying around everywhere.
We left the hotel around 1 in search of some street food, we were determined to try it, it is ¼ of the price and all the locals eat it. We found a little stand a block over and for 45 baht, had noodles, dumplings and a few pieces of pork with a coca cola thrown in as part of the package. It was really good, but with our appetites weren’t sure how long we would be held over.
We then took the skytrain to Victory Monument which was built in 1941 to honor the Thai military in their success in the Franco-Thai War.. The area was full of people and noise..megaphones shouting who knows what, vendors, shopping, busses…more people. We took a few snapshots and headed west to the Dusit Zoo. People beware!!! The maps of the city are much much smaller in scale as to what you really have to walk.
The zoo was a great zoo…all of the animals were VERY close to you. We saw the typical animals, although some were in weird situations (look at all the pictures to the right) The zebras were in the same area with the giraffes and ostriches along with huge monitors.
We saw these fish, they looked like dinosaurs, devouring bread being thrown in the water, and elephants out in the open with children just lazily sitting on their backs. The monitors roamed the park at their own will…so if you visit the zoo, keep your eyes peeled because right next to you may be a 3 foot monitor just out for a stroll.
They had the common lions, cats, bears, monkeys, sloths, and birds, but the scenery was beautiful, the people nice and a great place to spend an afternoon.
After I refused to walk all the way back to the train station, I had almost convinced Adam into taking a tuk tuk…but when we asked for a price, then man said 150 baht, we laughed and walked away…he screamed his bargin down to 20 baht by the time we were across the road (Adam won, he wants to visit Thailand without ever once saying yes to a tuk tuk driver) We took the public bus, number 28 for 13 baht a piece. It drove with the doors open and a woman collecting money for your fare, just like on the public boats.
We picked up a little more street food and made our way back to Sukhumvit on the very nice air conditioned skytrain. Ate club sandwiches, drank a chaing beer downstairs at the restaurant, and were both sound asleep by 9:00 pm. The sun is exhausting, the walking and exercise is wonderful. We have decided that since our travels will be for so long, it is okay not to push ourselves and it is okay to relax. We have been leaving the hotel around noon everyday and have been home by 9 at night, which allows us enough time to wonder and see things….without exhausting ourselves to the point where we need a whole day to recover
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Thanks for reading!
(the rest of the pictures of the Dusit Zoo are slowly being uploaded and will be on the sidebar on the right in a few days :)
Expenditures
Hotel room 800
Sky Train 200
Lunch 90
Entry to zoo – free
Popcicles – 16
Water – 10
Bus – 14
Dinner – 353
Roadside meal 90
Total – 1573 (including the hotel) – total $48.32
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