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| HAPPY CANADA DAY |
Might as well start this with the obvious...Happy 147th Birthday Canada! Doing my best to represent the country right, as I wonder the streets of Bangkok, and take self-timer pictures with my Canada badge along side the Chao Praya River. Thinking of everyone back home and wishing I could find a roman candle or two to light off here. Attempted to visit the Canadian Embassy today to catch a glimpse of the flag or some reminder of the wonderful country I come from, but it turns out our embassy is not nearly as exciting as the US or German Embassy here, and is in fact just a floor in an office building. That is something I'm finding though - the further into my travel I get, the more excited I find myself when I see a Canada flag, or badge on someone's bag, or symbol on a t-shirt. I think we Canadians are pretty great!
Moving on....after a fairly emotional 'see you soon' with the amazing friends and family I had the pleasure of spending the last 7 weeks with in Bali (most importantly, Inka), I was off in the direction of the next chapter to my adventure, and packed like a sardine into an Air Asia plane, headed for Bangkok. One perk to being a sardine with a window seat, was looking out to see us flying level with the volcano I had climbed! Poking through the clouds, it was hard to miss. I made it safe and sound to my little hostel yesterday afternoon and spent the evening planning my stops and route for today's exploration...first stop being the Vietnam Embassy. It was definitely quite the change to go from my little village of Penestanan, back into the throngs of a large city, but everything started to feel more normal this morning. 
As Jocelyn and I got very good at when we toured through Singapore, Malaysia and Chiang Mai, I set off this morning on foot, at the crack of dawn to get the process of this Vietnamese Visa rolling. Iced coffee in hand, I found the embassy with no trouble, no line (as I was the first one there), and was in and out within 20 minutes. Plus, with the news that I could have the visa processed within two days at lesser of an added cost than what it will be to stay in a hostel in Bangkok any longer. Seeing as I was out so early, not much was open yet, so I wondered around the (smelly) city until 10AM, when I could take a peak into the monstrous MBK (shopping mall). MBK is 7 stories high and spans across the equivalent of, maybe, 5 city blocks by 5 city blocks. It was HUGE. And filled with the cheap version of anything you could possibly want. One entire floor is dedicated entirely to electronics. Cool to see, happy to get out, realizing as I stepped out onto the sidewalk that I had missed some sort of monsoon and not even known it!
On recommendation from my grandmother, my next stop was the Jim Thompson Museum. The story of Jim Thompson - what he did, the house he built, (and his unknown disappearance) - is fascinating and from the stories I had heard from my Buzzy, this spot was a must-see! I stumbled across the back of the museum as I was walking along the river, found my way to the front and walked into the most gorgeous entrance and courtyard this city probably has. Immediately it felt like I had been transported somewhere into the countryside and was now standing in the middle of beautiful gardens. I arrived just in time to join an English tour that had only just begun, and was shown around the different rooms of the house, had various art and artifacts explained, and learned more about the man behind it all. No cameras were allowed inside, so what you see here is what I got after the tour and was free to roam around the grounds. 
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| Mandarin Oriental Tea Room |
XOXO Nicky
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