Day 3

5/8/11

This morning we woke up early, had our devotion and continued painting the house. When we were done, we had congee for breakfast then washed up and brushed our teeth. I don’t quite remember why we did it in this order. Today, Aunty Chat told us that we were free to do whatever we wanted. So, Frankie being the Starbucks junkie wanted to go to Paragon, which is one of the uptown malls. Jo and I were more interested to go to Platinum, a mall with wholesales but Paragon took the day.

In Paragon, everything felt really grand. Frankie works in Starbucks back in Penang and he wanted to try his luck if he could get a discount on his coffee with his staff card, even when we were in a different country. We were so close until the manager came over and verified his card! We sat down for coffee and bagel, which Jo misread the menu and felt totally ripped off. Just sitting down & looking around, I noticed that Thai people are much more fashion forward than we are. Which made me feel underdressed since I did not come for this purpose.

We walked to the center of Paragon and there was this beautiful beautiful bouquets, arrangement and hives of flowers! It was so breathtaking, even more when there was this 4 piece band playing light jazz music right there. I sat down beside the flowers and I really could have stayed there all day. It was my idea of dreamland..

Moving on, there was this food fiesta which got us all excited. We had donuts, croissants and avocado ice cream. They were really really good stuff, I remember standing in front of the booth taking a long time choosing between a chocolate or ham & cheese croissant. While standing there deciding, I unabashedly had my fair share of samples too.. I was a foreigner after all.

By evening, we took the train to meet Frankie’s uncle who was gonna treat us to a real Thai dinner. We took the train which brought us to another stop where we had to wait for a taxi. The queue took us more than an hour, and it did not help that it was drizzling and it was right in the walk way of food stalls. I was pretty tired by the time we got to the restaurant and went to the restroom for a wash up. I must say that I was very impressed with the cleanliness of their public toilets! Way better than ours back home! Another thing was that their switches are all opposite, meaning you press up to on & down to off.

Dinner was generally good, Tom Yum was delicious but there weren’t any vegetable dishes which was a little setback for me. By this time I realize that too much pork is just too much. 

We slept early, long day tomorrow.