What to do on a free day in Bangkok? Well Colleen and I had a pretty good idea of our plans: American food, pedicures, and a little shopping. Other than that, just enjoy the day.
So we started out getting on a bus around 930am. Sean from the June team was headed the same way, so he helped us get to our first location. We took a bus to the sky train and got off at the Nana district. We had been in this area previously during race day, so we wanted to go back and check a few things out. We wanted to see some of the local bars because we had learned that prostitution was very prevalent there. We had heard and read a lot through the blogs about the ministry in the bars, and we ended up not doing any ministry there ourselves this month, so we wanted to go see it for ourselves. We walked up and down some streets in Nana for a good hour and didn’t see much of anything, I don’t really know where we were at, and so we just decided to get some lunch instead.
So the American food places we had seen so far were subway, Tony Roma’s, and McDonalds. Subway sounded pretty good and healthy compared to rice, so we opted for that. Now normally our team gives us a budget of 100 Baht a day for food (that’s about 1 US dollar), but I came into this day knowing I was going to have to spend some of my own money to get that American AMAZING food. So I paid an extra 20 Baht to get a chicken sandwich. I’m not going to lie, that was the best chicken sandwich I’ve had in a good long time, maybe ever. We even sprang for chips and a drink. Barbeque chips. I know, you’re jealous.
So after lunch we were on our next mission: find a place to get a pedicure. For some reason we thought that this was going to be extremely easy. I mean Thailand is known for having nail salons on every corner, right? We walked up and down the city of Bangkok for over two hours looking for anywhere that would give us a pedicure. This was our main goal for the day and were not willing to give up. Right as we were about to give up or get mad, I’m not sure which, we saw a little joint hidden behind some street vendors. It was a hair salon, but we decided to go in and ask where a nail salon was. They didn’t speak English really, but lucky for us, there was a woman in there getting her hair done who did, and she informed us that they do pedicures there. Hoorah! I know, who uses that word anymore? But that’s how I felt at that moment. So did Colleen.
So we both got pedicures, for less than our Subway sandwich cost, and were very pleased with how our day was going. At this point it was about 3:45pm and the next thing on our schedule was to meet some other people at the Night Bazaar later on. We decided we would get McDonalds for dinner, so we headed down the street looking for one. We walked for over an hour before we found one. But when we did, it was well worth it. Cheeseburger, fries, and a coke zero. Mmmm. We even super sized it! I don’t even eat fast food back at home. It’s gross, it’s fattening, but it was amazing! And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t get any stomach aches after eating today, so it was well worth it!
After Mickey D’s, we decided to walk to the Night Bazaar instead of taking the train. We were all about saving money and burning off some of our cheeseburger we had just consumed. The whole day we had been kind of confused/unaware of where we were going, but we finally found a map, and were able to locate where we needed to go to get to the market. So we wrote down directions, street by street, to make sure we could get there without any problems. And to our own surprise, it worked! We made it to the Night Bazaar in just over an hour without any times of getting lost. We were pretty proud of ourselves. We jogged into the market with hands held high, singing the tune of rocky. It was a good moment.
We were never able to find the people that we originally went there to hang out with. So after an hour and a half our feet had had enough and demanded that we find our way back home. We decided to take a bus since it would be the cheapest way back. I mean if we’re going to be spending a ton of money, it should at least be on a greasy burger, right? So we spent the next 2 hours on 2 different busses making our way back to the YWAM base.
Thirteen hours later we made it back home. We decided that since we walked for a good 8 hours that day, we must have walked at least twelve miles. First on the agenda, shower. Second, blog about it. And third, bed. So since the first two are now complete, there’s only one thing left to do….
