Steps – Race Day Bangkok
One thing that I learned on race day is that the people of Thailand like stairs. What do I mean, well, it seems that everywhere we went today we had to go up or down a flight of stairs.
I started race day on the 4th floor of the Youth With A Mission housing facility. And yes, I forgot at least two things requiring me to go up and down these 4 flights of stairs at least 2 times that afternoon. Once we started the race, we climbed aboard a bus to take us to the air train system, where we had to go up a flight of stairs to purchase a day pass then up one more flight to the platform. Off we were racing confidently with the “Asia” race belonged to Team Zion. We had a plan, the mighty Casey & his map of the city and the locations already mapped out.
We meet some new friends on the Air train and discovered that all over the country of Thailand, people wear yellow shirts on Monday and blue shirts on Friday in honor and respect of the King. – However this is not to be confused with the “Same Same” shirts we were searching for.
We arrived at our first stop – our mission: find a yellow duck and take a team picture on it. Hummm, what ever could they mean????
Mission accomplished – back up the stairs onto the air train again to repeat the process at the next stop. It seems that most of our mystery locations were right off of this handy public transportation system. Praise God, but it contributed to my day being filled with “steps”. Then off to the mall, where to the relief of my legs we find escalators and Air Conditioning. Liking this environment so much we in turn spent the next hour plus searching the entire mall, and surrounding markets for a simple photo booth. You know, those cute little booths that you would go to on a first date to document the wonderful evening and tack it to your wall for the next four years. Oh wait; I digressed into a 80’s high school flick. Back to the search for a photo booth – there was NO PHOTO BOOTH in this mall. After discussion with the other teams, it appears that this is the only mall in Bangkok without one, but we sadly didn’t know that till an hour of our precious time was wasted.
So back up the steps to the air train for our next mission. As the rest of the day journed on, we went up and down the streets, towers, sky train steps and mall escalators taking in the beauty, culture and life of Bangkok. The city is wonderful, easy to move around in and filled with great sites I ran by.
Sadly, but not do to lack of effort and quick thinking Team Zion crawls in to our pit stop in last place. Thank God it was not an elimination round or I’d be seeing you all soon.
