Arrival in Bangkok!

The trip from SFO to Bangkok was long, but fairly uneventful. I flew on EVA, and had a three hour layover in Taipei. On the plane between Taipei and Bangkok, the girl next to me was also doing a post-graduation trip to Thailand, so we took a taxi into central Bangkok together, but then split up to go to our separate hostels. My hostel is located in the new shopping district of Bangkok. After checking in, I headed over to the MBK mall, which is a gigantic eight floor shopping complex, in order to purchase a Thai cell phone and SIM card. Fortunately, I had looked up ahead of time that the cell phone/electronics area was on the fourth floor, so it didn’t take too long for me to find and the cell phone purchase was pretty easy. After that, I wandered around the mall for awhile. It really is like a maze, with hundreds of small shops and a few larger department stores, and quite a few western chain food stores like Dairy Queen. I found it impossible to not get lost! The mall seemed to be a pretty international place with quite a few western tourists. Bangkok must also be a popular destination for people from the Middle East. I saw a lot of women wearing a hijab and full length black dress, and several wearing a niqab as well. Also, I noticed that a number of restaurants advertised that they serve halal food.   Eventually I made my way to a food court on the fifth floor, and rewarded myself with a lychee-banana smoothie. Then I headed back to the hostel to give Oom, the coordinator of Volunthai a call to confirm the plan for tomorrow. Finally, I was getting really tired, so I headed back to the food court for dinner, where I had some pad thai and sticky rice with black beans and coconut milk for dessert.  Up early in the morning for the bus ride to Chaiyaphum province!