Bangkok malls and eating street food (July 30)

After an “American breakfast” at the hotel, which consisted of fried eggs, hot dogs, and wonder bread (fortunately I had some other snacks I had brought in my hotel room to fill up on), the van picked me up a bit after 9 and we started the drive back to Bangkok.  Due to the traffic, we got back into Bangkok around 12:30 or 1. After getting some lunch, I edited a physics paper for a while, and then I headed out to see the Siam center area. I had stopped by here briefly earlier in the trip to pick up some books. Siam center is the closest thing Bangkok has to a “center,” and it is filled with many shopping malls. Some of them, like the MBK mall, which I visited during my first day in Bangkok to get my cell phone, offer lots of small shops, fake goods, and low prices. The fanciest mall, the Siam Paragon, is filled with various international brands. Gap (surprise!) was having a sale (50% off) but I didn’t buy anything there, although I did get a new shirt at H & M. The square between the Siam Paragon mall and the Siam Discovery mall had a couple multi-story flatscreen TVs featuring advertisements, the atmosphere was similar to some of the busy shopping areas in Tokyo that I experienced. After exploring for awhile, I headed back to the hostel area for dinner and picked up food from my favorite street food stands since I only have a couple more nights to enjoy them—pad thai, grilled mushrooms with chile sauce, pearl milk tea, and fruit. The street food is one of my favorite things about Bangkok. In the area around the hostel, tons of stands set up in the evening (and some are there all day) to sell various foods, as well as a variety of other stands selling clothes, purses, etc. It can make the sidewalk crowded and hard to navigate at times, but there are so many tasty snacks to try! Some of my favorites are the fruit stands, which are open all day, so it is really easy to pick up fruit for a snack. A common thing is to get slices of a more sour, firm fruit in a bag with a stick, and then a second bag with chile-sugar mixture to dip the fruit in. I’m not sure what some of these fruits are, but they are tasty!