Bangkok Part 2

June 30 - We Go to the Zoo

I read that the Zoo in Bangkok costs 100 baht, which is roughly three dollars. This sounded like a reasonable way to spend time, so we took the train up to the Victory Monument and went for a long walk from there to reach the zoo.

It was hot. Maybe we should've taken a tuk-tuk, but eventually we reached the zoo (a bit sweaty). After pausing for a cool drink at a little drink store inside the zoo, we began our trek around to see animals. Right off the bat we find this tiger napping in water beside the glass of the enclosure.

 There were more tigers hidden away farther back, and in another enclosure a white bengal.

My favorite thing about this zoo is the illustrations, which come in two flavors that I'll give examples of, but both are great. The first is exemplified best in this image:

I'm not sure what to say about it, it was provided on a display which explained that tigers are not typically threats to humans...hopefully it makes you feel things all on its own and I don't need to figure out why I found it so hilarious and explain it.

Here's an alert and active bear that sat up and stared at us...I think...yeah I definitely uploaded the blurry crap photo instead of the nice crisp one. Oh well, my quality control standards on the blog are pretty lax. 

Peacock?

Some kind of nocturnal cat.  

Ok, so outside the hippo exhibit is my example of the other kind of illustration, which were adorable and wacky:

And educational!

And last but not least, here's some otters playing around...or fighting...was hard to tell.

After the zoo we crawled home, worn and tired. We probably ate later. I read about Bangkok's nice movie theaters that are super cheap, and we figured we could test them out the next afternoon to escape the heat. 

Uh, I don't know what else we did. Christian shaved. 

7/1 - Last Day in Bangkok

We decided we'd spend all day exploring the posh, shopping experience of BAngkok which dwelt right outside our hostel. Mainly the Terminal 21 mall, which is a 6 story mall with each story themed as a different global city. Rome, Istanbul, Paris, San Francisco, San Francisco again, and Hollywoodat the top. Yes, California claimed more than half the themed floors. The SF floors were mainly restaurants, while the Hollywood floor was the cinema.

We actually went shopping. I bought a 300 baht hoody sweater which I figure will be useful in Japan because we are planning to climb Mt. Fuji which is cold. Christian bought himself some fancy pants.

After lunch we grabbed a matinee at the cinema. It was like 100 baht. We saw Survivor, which is...like...kind of a spy thriller type movie, except our protagonist is a simple US Visa officer in London charged with trying not to give visas to terrorists, and then there is a sort of hiccup in that part of the job that she needs to fix, but meanwhile Pierce Brosnan is trying to kill her. 

It was alright. Totally worth 3 dollars.

We went and did more boring crap, ate foods, looked at things we had no intention of buying. Somehow time went by. We ate more mexican food for dinner, something like Sunset Tacos? Sunrise? Idk, it was pretty good, tasted more or less like the mexican food you might find in a real san francisco taqueria (that is to say, not quite like a real mexican taqueria)...including some quirks like my veggie enchilada having potatoes in it.

Um, and then we went and saw the new terminator movie, which apparently literally came out that evening. It was super cheap still. Movie wasn't that good again. AC was great though.

Oh, weirdly at that start of movies there, the audience stands up for the...king's anthem or something, which was this dainty song of lady vocals that played while a bunch of stuff in Thai appeared on screen, including pictures of the king and his pet dogs over the passing years...

7/2 - Leaving for Siem Reap

Leaving Bangkok. At the center of the image is the Grand Palace (next to the oval field and the river)

We flew to Siem Reap today. Its a dusty little town, but lively with tourists of all ages, which is great to see. We didn't get up to much more than checking in, getting our bearings, and then heading into town for dinner and a drink earlier. You can at some establishments get a beer for 50 cents here.

They mainly use USD, but use Cambodian Riel for values of less than 1 USD. It's about 4000 riel to a dollar, so conversions of cents isn't automatic for me except to imagine that 1000 riel is about a quarter. 

We're signed up for a tour tomorrow, and we'll do another the next day, so that will be exciting and probably bring nice pictures and junk.

Bye!