Ready to Head Home

Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010--Bangkok

I got a call from Ty, a friend who works at a travel agency and had communicated with me over the Internet. He works near my hotel and asked if I would like to meet him for lunch. I went to the nearby park and read for about an hour, then I met him at the SkyTrain station nearby at noon. He took me to a small place near there where he said he often eats lunch. I had green curry with chicken and two small fish cakes with a spicy dip.

When he headed back to work, I went to Chulalongkorn University to see their current art exhibition. Unfortunately, it was not anything that I could appreciate. From there, I went to the Lido to see the only foreign film they had showing--Baaria, an Italian epic which was nominated for a Golden Globe last year as the best foreign-language film. The story was too sweeping and moved too fast. It would have made a great 8-hour mini-series for TV. As a film, however, the sets, costumes, and cinematography were fantastic. I gave the film 2 1/2 stars out of 4.

When I came out of the theater, there was heavy rain with full sunshine. The sun was low in the sky and shining under the clouds. But the sidewalks and streets were flooding from such heavy rain. It was impossible to come back to the hotel without my shoes and socks getting completely soaked.

Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010--Bangkok

This is my last day in town, and there is nothing in particular that I wanted to do. I stayed in the room most of the morning. Just before noon, I walked to the main shopping area where I visited the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. It's a bit like Blue Star in San Antonio in that there is an exhibit space as well as spaces rented out to galleries and artists. Unfortunately, a big exhibit had closed last week, and they only had a small exhibit in place today consisting of some very nice photography of Thai people and the Thai landscape.

After eating, I returned to the room. I panicked when I couldn't find my receipt for my key deposit, because I have spent almost all of my Thai currency and had planned to use the key deposit to pay for my taxi ride to the airport tomorrow. Here in Asia it is quite common for hotels to charge a cash deposit for the key and give a receipt. They imply that you must return BOTH the key and the receipt to get the deposit back. Fortunately, it had gotten between two older receipts, and I found it when I checked a second time around.

Everything is packed and ready for me to leave tomorrow morning. I hope to be able to go to sleep at 20:30, since I have set the alarm to get me up at 3:30 tomorrow morning. I HATE early flights, but there was no way to get all the way to San Antonio in one day without leaving that early.

I'll make one final post when I get home to tell about the trip, to give a spending update, and to recommend a travel blog you might want to follow if you enjoy reading this one.