Back in Bangkok for a night of luxury

After our low-budget trip, we decided to live it up our last night and stayed at the Peninsula Hotel, located on the river in a business district. On arrival, the staff gave us jasmine garlands. People usually buy these on the street to hang on Buddhas for good luck, and Sara uses them to sniff for relief when walking through particularly aromatic areas.

Our room was beautiful with a view over the river and tons of space. We immediately went down to the pool area, which overlooks the river. We only had a short time to relax and enjoy, however, since we booked massages and pedicures to recover from our backpacking trip.

The Thai massage was the best massage I’ve ever had! I’m not an expert, but this felt great! All the stretching and weird pounding and I was truly relaxed. The pedicures were fun since we half gossiped with the ladies about the hotel and whatnot.

While they working on our feet, we gave the room service menu a serious look, since neither of us had the proper footwear (can you believe they explicitly banned flip flops?) for any of the hotel restaurants and we were feeling way too relaxed to head out. Since it was our last night together, we ordered everything that looked good – it didn’t even all fit on the table. Quite a feast!

While we were enjoying dinner and champagne, fireworks started popping right outside our window! I think there was a wedding or something going on across the river, but we celebrated like they were for our trip. Quite an amazing show, on a perfect night.

Sadly with all the eating and drinking, we both crashed pretty early.

Our final morning in Bangkok, we ordered room service – they have amazing fruit in Thailand and then headed out for some shopping. On the advice of my boss, we got a car to Venus Jewelers and bought a few things. Every price was negotiable, so we just kept picking out what we wanted, and then they gave us a very agreeable final price and a lot of free gifts – I think they were happy we came.

We spent the rest of the day bumming around Bangkok, trying to find an airline ticket for Sara. It took forever and was pretty confusing, since we had to actually go to the offices, but it worked out eventually. We took the Skytrain back to the river, then one of the hotel boats across. The boat was so hokey – all the workers were dressed in white with gold buttons and little yachting insignia.