We had a lie in until 9am and then decided it was time to get up. It was hard to gage what time of day it was in a room with no windows: it always seemed to be midnight.
We showered, got dressed and made our way to the bus stop – we were going to one of the biggest shopping centres in the world and decided to take the local transport getting there. Edd had Google mapped it out and apparently we needed to take the 183 bus. I distinctly remembered it being the bus that did not exist; a tour operator told us to take the number 15 bus instead.
 
As we umm’ed and aaah’ed about whether to wait for the illusive 183 or cross the road to get the 15, 6 number 15 busses passed us, all at the same time. So much for staggering them to arrive every 10 minutes. A man in a bus box told us to cross the road and take the number 15 from there, so we did, but no number 15 buses passed us for 40 minutes. Every other bus under the sun, and all of its cousins, stopped where we were waiting. We gave up taking the cheaper option and hailed a taxi.
 
We assumed the reason for the bus delay was 1. They all arrived at the same time and 2. The traffic was so bad in town that they were probably stuck somewhere. It took our taxi driver over half an hour to take us to the shopping centre. We jumped out 2 streets down from where it was and walked the last 10 minutes: even he admitted the traffic was horrendous and it would be faster to just walk.
 
We stopped at McDonalds for some breakfast/lunch and I also got a Starbucks coffee; they were expensive, but I needed a treat after the hellishly long trip we’d taken the day before. After we’d finished eating, I walked around the shopping centre with a coffee in one hand and a massive drink in the other. It was delicious.
 
The shopping centre comprised of 7 floors and each floor was a labyrinth of shops strategically broken up by escalators and stages where models were practising a fashion show, people were being interviewed or people dressed up as characters were entertaining children. This was going to take a while. We had 1 goal: I needed a new bikini. My old new one was too big.
 
After initially insisting on a strategy, Edd gave up and we wondered around until we came across shops that looked like they might have bikinis in them. One store had a multitude of options, the ones that we liked, didn’t have my size. Naturally.
 
We then walked into a department store and found another large range of options. The pair of us walked around selecting ones we liked and then I went off to try them on. In the end there were 2 we really liked, but one looked nicer on, so a decision was made and shop assistants were left to deal with bikini tops and bottoms to put back onto strange hangers that made no sense.
 
Edd then discovered that they had a diving and snorkelling section. We were going to be spending the last few (7) weeks we had left near or on the beach. You could hire equipment, but neither of us were too keen on the idea of sticking a communal snorkel in our mouths. The stuff was reasonably priced and we selected a mask each, 2 snorkels with bits on top that apparently closed when you went under water (we’ll have to test this theory) and I found a pair of cheap flippers that fitted me nicely. (We still have to find a pair for Edd, he can wear the ones I found, but they only had 1 pair left in the store, so we decided to share them until we found a more suitable pair for him).
 
We were satisfied with our selections and went to pay. Sales assistants in Thailand get commission for sales, much like in England; the difference being, however, that in Thailand these sales assistants go with you to the till, have their barcode scanned and then pack your items into a bag for you. The snorkel guy went and called the bikini guy over to assist us with our purchases: the bikini guy had to pack my bikini into a bag separately, they were seen as 2 different purchases, even though we were only paying once. It was most peculiar.
 
We were on the 3rd floor and had been there for 4 hours. We hadn’t even made it half way. In 4 hours. There was just too much shopping centre and not enough time. We were over it and decided to make our way back to Koh San Road.
 
We’d done our best over the course of 2 months to try out every form of transport available. Some of these were not so VIP buses, some of them were sleeper trains with locals, and some of them were taxis. We had not yet taken the Sky Train in Bangkok and decide we should try it out.
We enquired at the information counter as to which station we should get off at and how to buy tickets and the lady advised that it would be easier to take the number 15 bus as it went right up to Koh San Road, the Sky Train only went half way and you had to take a taxi for the other half. We’d already spunked 100B on a taxi (excluding tolls) and decided to give the bus one more shot.
 
Along a passage, down 2 flights of stairs and a short walk to the left, found us as the bus stop. It was hot and sticky even though it was 4.30pm. We’d forgotten how humid Bangkok was, even though it was significantly cooler than when we’d been there 2 months earlier.
 
After a 10-minute wait, the bus arrived and we climbed in. There were leather seats, no aircon, and wide-open windows. This was going to be a sweaty ride. We positioned ourselves right at the back of the bus on the right hand side, next to an open window. It turned out we were sitting next to a Thai lady that had some sort of mental issue: she kept talking under her breath and looking at me, gesturing about whatever was going on in her mind with her left hand. It was a bit scary and I did my best to avoid eye contact – just in case.
 
It took the bus 40 minutes to get us back to our hostel, but it did drop us of virtually right outside, so we were in our air-conditioned room in no time. We peeled our clothes off and had a little lie down, Edd’s friend was arriving later in the evening, so we had to soak up as much cool air as possible, later it was going to be a wait in the restaurant area under a fan.
 
We made our way downstairs at 8pm, went to the 7/11 to get a beer for Edd and a Mojito in a bottle for me. We then positioned ourselves strategically under a fan and sat Googling which islands to go to in the south, how to get there and where to stay.
 
Edd’s friend arrived a little after 9pm, checked in and had a shower. We then went in search of food as we’d decided to wait for him to arrive before we ate. We had some food at a quiet local up the road and then headed down to the main bit of the madness to have a drink.
After a few botched attempts at finding somewhere to drink that had good specials on and reasonable prices, we decided to go back to the same bar/pub we were at the night before with the Swedish guys.
 
Buckets of Mai Tai and some other concoction were purchased and consumed. We ordered another one. And then another. We ended up going back to our hostel at 4am, having consumed an unreasonable amount of cocktail buckets. We needed to be up early for the weekend market, and had to get a bit of sleep in beforehand..