Massage is a great cure for jet lag

We woke up starving the next morning and headed downstairs for breakfast. What a breakfast it was!! Along with an egg, ham, and toast (the American part of the meal) we had Thai donuts, small coconut pancakes, coconut yogurt, and tons of fresh fruit. Some of the fruit, I had never seen before, but it was all quite tasty. The mango was amazing, and obviously very fresh. We even got a second serving of it. Once we had completely stuffed ourselves, we decided that the next thing that we needed was a massage. Our host recommended a new spa called Lullaby and kindly made us appointments. We found out what time we needed to be downstairs to catch a taxi and headed up to get ready.

We presented ourselves downstairs at the appointed time and went about the business of getting a cab. After our host had a long discussion with the taxi driver, we were off. Taxis here are quite different than anywhere else I have ever visited. They may or may not be interested in taking you where you want to go depending on how bad traffic is and when the end of their shift is. If you are obviously a tourist, they don't want to use the meter and want to WAY overcharge you for the trip. They also may or may not know how to get where you want to go. Being on the road is an adventure here as well. All normal traffic laws are only a suggestion. People use all lanes for about any direction of travel that they can come up with. Motorbikes travel between cars and the red lights don't seem to apply to them. Red light only apply to cars if they have been red a while. I certainly wouldn't want to be the one driving the car!

After battling traffic and spending over half an hour to go a few miles, we arrived at the spa. It is housed in a building where almost all of the stores and services are related to health. There is a gym, a few diet places, some sort of health clinic, and a Starbucks just in case you are tired of being healthy! The spa was beautiful inside. We were quickly relieved of our shoes and given slippers to wear. No one wears shoes in their houses here (or the temples either as we would soon learn). We had a double massage room that even had a shower in it for after. A two hour Swedish massage here cost us a huge 1000 baht (about $30). It will be a challenge to not return daily! Next time we want to try the Thai massage, which uses more pressure and no oil. Two hours of that is only 550 baht. We need to find somewhere with these prices at home. After an amazing massage, we both forced ourselves to move and were taken to a comfy couch where some yummy hot tea was waiting.

Since we were right across the street for it we set out to the Suan Lum night market. From what we here, the market will be closing soon. There were rows and rows of stalls with everything that you can imagine for sale. We wandered for a while and then picked an Italian and Thai restaurant to dine at. Somehow we both ended up dining off the Italian portion of the menu, but it was wonderful. After getting some gellato to go for desert (they had hazelnut, one of my favorites!), we wandered the market some more before getting a cab home.

This is when we discovered the joys of getting a cab without a native with you. The first driver claimed he had no idea where we wanted to go (even though we had a nice handout from the hotel with info written in Thai on it). He was anxious to take us to some sort of jewelry store here. That is a popular technique for drivers here. They know a great jewelry store/restaurant/tailor to take you to. We told him no thanks and moved on. The next driver knew where we wanted to go, but we got into the car without telling him to turn on the meter. We fought about price for a while and finally settled on an amount. He did get us back, but it was a bit more than we paid to get out there. Our next hotel will have the huge advantage of being near the skytrain (monorail) so we can get where we need to go without cabs! We headed to bed to rest up for our big day tomorrows.. Touring Bangkok with a tour guide!