sammi needham : cogitate

really wanted eggs for brekky this morning, feeling a bit seedy from the Tiger longnecks the night before. At 3 dollars a pop Aussie I thought they were a bit steep but we were in tourist central last night so we copped it.

Went to a place down the road called the Tamarind cafe for breakfast. We got the recommendation out of the Bangkok 101 book in our hotel room and it didn’t disappoint. 1 Banana pancake and a 3 egg omlette later we were spent and ready for some traditional Thai massage.

We grabbed a cab to the Wat Po temple which incidentally has the largest reclining buddah in the world couped up in a building with about 77 little tins that you are supposed to put 1 cent donations in. Interesting. But not as interesting as the one hour massages we got for 10 bucks. I think the little dude that was doing mine might have been up for it. He spent a good portion of that hour working on my ass. If you ask me, my ass was already pretty loose. Not in that way.

After loosenting up we caught a long boat down the river to the Penninsula hotel for a round of high tea. It was pleasant, and probably the most expensive meal we will eat here at around 80 bucks. Although it did include a round of scotch. It was plentiful and delicious.

Now just lying back in the hotel after a short kip about to head down the end of the street where Bella Napoli is supposed to serve one of the best Italian meals in Bangkok. You can’t eat Thai the whole time. Pizza calls.

Up at 4:30 am tomorrow to fly to Koh Samui. Ouch.

A 9 hour flight next to one of the biggest beast-women I am ever likely to see isn’t generally my idea of a good time. She was a scary woman. Suckin back vodka and oranges in the way some people think that the free booze on international flights subsidies their fare. Desperately eyeballing the isles in search of the hosties every five minutes. Maybe she hadn’t found the booze button on her nintendo controller. I watched jumper and national treasure 2. Perfect plane fodder.

Bangkok is hot. My Tasmanian heritage is making me struggle to get through the day without it becoming a sweat fest, as I am sure the photos will attest. But there has been very little wet season rain so far. So that’s good.

Staying in a place called “seven” in the “pink” room no less. Is that perfect or what? It is in an area lord sukhuimvit. Which is pretty much bridgewater meets grey street st kilda meets footscray. So it is quite interesting. The hotel is fantastic.

Had a big first day of shopping yesterday. Then went I visit the other side of town fr a squiz at the spectacle that is khao San. Tourist central. Many beers later we negotiated well scoring a 5 dollar cab ride home back to the other side of bankok.

Today is all about massage and pizza.

This is possibly my favourite shot from the holiday.

It’s a big metal bull thing, filled with fireworks that a dude wears on his back and does the bull run at 10pm every night of the festival. There are no real bulls at this time, only one big metal one. All these dads and kids and drunk people follow him around, it’s a real family affair. That is, as long as you don’t cop an explosion in the eye.

After four days, all photos from my spanish holiday are uploaded to Flickr. I haven’t really used Flickr much as i only really signed up for it as a way to share and categorise these trip photos. I’ve found it pretty easy to use Flickr Uploadr for the mac to create sets and upload photos as a batch, so that’s good. I’ve found it easy to make collections and organise the photo sets inside them with Flickr, so that’s good too. I like the way that if you’re logged in you can just click an image title and edit it right on the page, it’s good. There’s lots i haven’t done with it though, like blogging photos from flickr, and sending camera phone photos to flickr, and assigning map locations to photos with flickr, and anal. I’m sure it’s good at lots of things, i look forward to exploring them.

It’s a bit slow to browse photos though, and i’d like a MCE plugin for it. That way if i ever get around to having a slide night it’ll be much more impressive.

Trip photo collection can be found here…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sammi77/collections/72157600799949198/