a nice restaurant we walked past
BY the time we got out of the hostel it was already 3 plus and we went straight for the skytrain at Thong Lo. It's another 15 mins before we reached the station.
Reminds me of our Putra LRT..
At almost 4pm, Bangkok is still very hot and humid. It's great to see that they place a security guard on every station- it makse you feel safe using the transport system here. The guard also helps in directing traffic when the train stops at the station. If the train door is closing and you're a couple of meters away running towards it, the guard will blow his whistle and stop you.
I find the people more civilised- they wait for passengers to get off the train first.
We got off at Chit Lom station and went to Central World Plaza, formerly know as the World Trade Centre. Crossing the bridge to the plaza gave us the chance to see Bangkok infamous traffic jam. It's amazing that at any time of the day the road is filled with vehicles, mostly Toyatas if I may add.
Makes Klang valley jam look like kacang putih
Central World Plaza is currently under renovation, and the scheduled date of completion is June 2006- just in time for World Cup in Germany(non-related, just a thought as I'm typing this). Didn't do much shopping but we found a sports shop selling cheap shoes- gf's dad wanted a pair of shoes. Since it's Day 1 and we were going to Lumphini later on, we decided to come back on our last day to buy it.
After walking for about an hour, we took the Skytrain to Sala Daeng and hopped on the MRT to Lumphini.
Outside Lumphini Park
Another shot outside Lumphini Park- the structure on the lef t is the Skytrain tracks
We were rather early for muay thai actually. On the way to the stadium we could see people from the boxing camps wearing bright red or blue jackets with thai words written at the back, giving out papers to the spectators. We got one as well and were told that there were about 10 matches tonight, and the main event would probably start around 8plus. Since it was only about 6pm, we decided to go to Suan Lum Night Bazaar first.
Walking around the market
Going to the Suan Lum Night Bazaar was planned in the very beginning since I read about Gina's visit, and we were not disappointed. The place is quite huge and you can definitely get a lot of things there- way better that going to Patphong market. After walking about, I bought a singlet and 2 Muay Thai accessories for my BodyCombat class. It was around 7pm when we went back to the boxing stadium. We bought the cheapest ticket we could get at 1000 baht each.
Sorry, I took a few shots of the matches with my gf's camera so I can't show you for the time being. Anyhow we stayed there for 3 matches and then went out to makan since the main event was the 5th match.
The thing about eating in Bangkok is you don't quite know what you will be eating unless you ask the hawker. We look around and some food stall outside were selling some nice food but mostly were pork. We're more of chicken lovers so we looked around but couldn't find a stall with chicken- seems like pork is the main diet of Thais. Eventually we settled for BBQ beef sticks just to temporarily tahan our hunger. The beef sticks were fantastic!
I have no idea why he put on his funny face
We later went to a muay thai shop and I bought another top before we went back into the stadium to watch the main event. One of the boxer was really in the mood to dance. He danced from one corner to another while the other boxer simply stopped at one. So everyone was waiting for this guy to dance and show his respect to the opponents, the trainers, the spectators who came to bet, and of course tourists like me. I thought his dancing skill was fantastic though.
Too bad his boxing skill wasn't as good.
The matches weren't too violent- in fact most of the matches were not that brutal until the last 2 rounds(there are 5 rounds in every match) when the kicks came flying from everywhere. The spectators were really into the matches too, shouting and cheering with every punch/kick executed.
After the main event was over, we went back to the bazaar to look around. By then it was around 9 plus and our feet were getting tired. After we got OCD bro's wallet we went back to Thong Lo and had our dinner there by the road. Then, we walked back to our hostel and a good rest.
Pretty tired for a first day of holidays. Oh well,... at least we get to watch a real muay thai match "live".
