Day 2 - Let the adventure begin.

Hitting the street.
This morning started early awoken by the calls of some kind of tropical bird in the trees outside our hotel room. We all got plenty of sleep, so no big. Grabbed a leisurely continental bfast at the hotel while we mapped out a game plan for the day. The primary mission was shopping, with a secondary goal of trying to get our phones unlocked so we could use local SIM cards (more on that later).
So we set out into the big city, ready to take it all in. Pulling Amanda along by the arm to avoid potholes, exposed rhebar, puddles of ooze, kamikaze moped riders and general mayhem. Finally figured out there is a nice raised walkway down the middle of Thanon Rama I that connects all the shopping malls, so we found some shelter there. Again had a lengthy unsolicited conversation with a local on where the best shopping spots were.

Unlock Bust.
We make our way to MBK mall and headed to the 4th floor where all the mobile phone hawkers do business. Got there a bit early so not all were open yet, but tried to get a read on the phone unlocking situation. Seemed kinda on the down low. After a couple hours of browsing around and asking, finally decided to go for it and handed my brand new $500 Samsung Galaxy S Relay smartphone over to some gal in a booth that only spoke a few words of English. She whisked it away and came back a few minutes later and said: "500 baht, you come back in hour." Reluctantly, I agreed and went about shopping and lunching all the while imagining my lovely new smartphone and it's journey thru the back alleyways of Bangkok and into the hands of a gritty shirtless man hunched over a laptop, smoking a cigarette where he would perform some kind of incantation on my phone to allow it to work with a local SIM. An hour passes and I nervously go back to the stall to get a status. I get blank stares from the gals in the booth until I point at my watch and say "Is it ready yet? It's been one hour". She scrambles away again, this time I follow her, trailing several yards behind to avoid detection, just like I've seen in the movies. I see her inquire to some lady with a corded phone on one ear and get a frustrated look, shoulder shrug and head shake in response. I but in and ask the lady myself, how much longer. She says come back in one hour. Nice. Ok, so i'm thinking at this point she must be close to cracking the code, so just stick with it.

I sulk away into the mall for another hour shelling out bahts to Ali and Amanda to stock up on cute girly gear, but counting the minutes as we go. There was a plethora of well priced fashion accessories at their disposal. Good thing I only had a limited amount of Baht. Turns out though, that being cute and blond is a great bargaining chip. Amanda got deals offered to her without even having to haggle!

Amanda and I spot a Thai Girl Scout and chase her down for a photo op. Cute. The girls are all stocked up on skirts and accessories, so we head back up to reclaim my phone. Again, the girl rushes away and comes back 15 minutes later apologizing profusely that they could not unlock my phone. Feeling utterly defeated I reclaim my phone and give it a once-over to make sure they didn't gut it or anything. Double bummer is  I factory reset it before I gave it to them (so no one could access any personal information) so now I have to re- setup my whole phone. Oh well. Busted on that one. Moving on.

Art is good.
We next took the skybridge across to the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. I'm not going to be able to say much here, because I am no art aficionado, only that there were some real amazing pieces on display here, and we must have spent a good 2 or 3 hours roaming the building, appreciating them. It's free by the way, and totally worth a visit.

Tuk-Tuk zoom.
Since we were pretty much beat up from the feet up, we decided the 20-30 minute walk back to the hotel in traffic, carrying the spoils of the day didn't sound like a grand idea so we opted for a tuk-tuk ride. We knew we were going to try this at some point and were concerned about getting "taken for a ride" as some have reported, so were reluctant to go with the first guy who approached us, but we did anyway. He walked us around the corner from mall down to where the tuk-tuks were all lined up patiently awaiting their next victims, er I mean fare. So we negotiate a price (250 bhat.. and yes probably too much..) and climb aboard. The engine starts up and we are treated to a nice faceful of exhaust fumes and then speed away into traffic. The look on Amanda's face at first was priceless, I only wish I had captured a photo. As we dodged in and out of traffic, making sure to keep limbs inside the vehicle at all times, it soon turned into fun as soon as we realized we might actually survive. A short while we arrive at our hotel, totally invigorated by the near death experience. Probably the highlight of the day.

Wow, that was a long one... time for some sleep. Let's see what tomorrow brings!
-rob