He says:

Holy smokes - what a day. Shauna and I arrived in Bangkok early this afternoon and this place is nuts. I've already accidently elbowed a little kid in the head, stepped on the feet on someone on the SkyTrain and said, "excuse me" at least 100 times. Needless to say, space is at a premium here in this city. I said to Shauna that Bangkok doesn't have a heartbeat it has tachycardia. It's a vibrant place with excitement around every turn. We took a tuk tuk to our hotel (a little motorcycle cab) which was super fun. Our hotel is the Lebua Tower, the same place where they shot much of the Hangover 2. We got upgraded to a Tower Suite on the 54th floor overlooking the Chao Phraya river just by asking very nicely (truth be told I was showing a lot of leg). The views are insane as we have a balcony. Shauna has been lollygagging around taking a bunch of photos which I'm sure we'll post when we have a chance. Tonight we're going to see the new Harry Potter movie VIP style at the Paragon Cineplex. This apparently is something to behold (not the movie, as we're both not big fans of Henry Potter), but the experience is apparently a must-do here in Bangkok. With the ticket price you get appetizers, popcorn, alcoholic bevvies, and a bed to watch the movie in. Tomorrow we're going to tour around this place and see the sights.

-Matt

She says:

After taking a train, then SkyTrain from the airport to get near our hotel, we hopped into one of the omnipresent tuk-tuks as it was raining and we didn't know exactly how to get to our hotel, though we could see it. After we dragged our butts into the tiny vehicle and set off, I remembered that during all my copious amounts of research that you are never to board a taxi or tuk tuk withouth first agreeing on a price. Whoops. We asked the driver what the cost would be and negotiated him down so that the ride was just over $1 Canadian. Phew.

Upon arriving to the hotel, we were greeted by uniformed staff bowing to us and parked our sweaty bodies onto fancy chairs set around a table with a fancy teapot for afternoon tea. A porter took our bags and asked for our passports. Matt was wary and didn't want to hand them over. At this hotel (Lebua at State Tower), there is no check-in desk. The check-in process comes to you. After checking his name tag and seeing that he was going into a room within sight of us, Matt handed over our passports. I gave what I think was a winning smile (although I'm sure it was eclipsed by the sweat coating my forehead and upper lip and the halo of frizzy multicoloured hair around my head) and asked if we could have a free room upgrade. He said he'd do what he could. I guess they were charmed, as another employee came out a few minutes later and told us we were in "The Dome" in a suite with a balcony, reached by a special elevator, and that we had an incredible view from the 54th floor. Oh yeah, my wily female seduction worked. I should go for the sweaty, bedraggled look more often.

Our room is incredible, huge with a sitting room and mini-kitchen. It has a douche nozzle next to the toilet and the slipperiest marble floors in the bathroom. Matt is in love with the super thick slippers that appeared on each side of the bed when we arrived back to find our bed folded down for us and tomorrow's temperature listed on a card on our pillows.

After showering off the layers of sweat and filth we had accumulated today, we checked out our free maps and decided to take an adventure to try to find the mall with the VIP movie theatre.

Siam Paragon mall is unbelievable. We had dinner in the biggest, most varied food court I've ever seen. We got a table behind a rope in the Asian Cuisine section and were handed a stack of menus. We chose some Thai and Indian dishes to share, they were delivered by several different people to our table and we ate our fill. It was kind of awesome.

The fancy, schmancy mall was having a Watch Expo and Matt was like a pig in poop. He tried on some super expensive watches and had bungled attempts to ask questions about the watches to the limited English speaking salespeople. Siam Paragon is a huge, upscale mall in a complex with three other shopping plazas. We visited the one across the road and saw super hip boutiques filled with daring clothes that neither of us could ever pull off.

On the very opposite side of the street and opposite end of the shopping spectrum is a big mall of knock-offs and when the sun went down, an outdoor market. Matt bought some incredible t-shirts as we continued to sweat through our own.

Public transportation via the SkyTrain in Bangkok is a breeze. Platforms and stops are clearly marked in English and we got the hang of things much more quickly than in Tokyo! It has been fascinating to travel on subways and trains in each of the cities we've visited, as you're afforded a real glimpse into the lives of people who live there. Bangkok's population is much more varied than any of the other cities we've visited so far and we no longer stand out as we have in Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong.

The heat continues to be unbelievable, we are sweating so much that we go through gallons of water without ever needing a bathroom break. I am sweating from places I didn't even know I could, like the back of my legs, not just the knee crease. Doing laundry in the sink has become a necessity with our small amounts of luggage packed.

We are constantly dealing with stark contrasts, as we go from spending pennies to ride a crowded train, packed with sweaty bodies to walking through local neighbourhoods and experiencing the loud and busy streets of Bangkok and then arriving to a shiny, sparkly, air conditioned hotel in our grubby clothes. It's very interesting how you can go from one extreme right into another in moments. We're never quite sure what we'll see, smell, hear or feel from one moment to the next. Our senses truly are on high alert and we are constantly adjusting to something new. It's very exciting, but as you can imagine, tiring!

As it turns out, the confused guy who sold us our VIP tickets sold them to us for the wrong date and when we arrived an hour and a half early for our 10:50 p.m. showing, we were actually more than half an hour late for that evening's show.

Since the movie was the final Harry Potter movie and neither of us had seen any of the other installments and the tickets cost more than $90 Canadian, we just got our money back and headed back to our hotel. We felt like we won some money and decided to spend it on massages later.

We met some hilarious neighbours in the hotel and had a thoroughly enjoyable evening enjoying the evening heat and sights of Bangkok with them.

After being awake for nearly 24 hours in two time zones (we were awoken by fire alarms at 5 a.m. in Hong Kong, fortunately they were false alarms set off by someone smoking), I did not sleep until 3 a.m. the following day. My poor, time travelling bod!

-Shauna