Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!

After arriving in Bangkok on the 29th, Henk and I decided to spend the 30th doing something a little mindless: going to the mall! Since we are staying in the ex-pat area, we discovered that a great mall – the Emporium – is just a train stop away. Although, we walked at first since we hadn’t yet discovered how to use the Bangkok SkyTrain. It was a nice yet long walk, sweaty since it is so humid here. We got to the mall around 4:40 pm (having slept in of course) and ventured inside. Wow! The mall was something I’d expect in only the nicest of modern Western big cities. It was very impressive, with all of the high-class expensive stores a la a Louis Vuitton directly left of the main entrance.



Henk and I walked around for a while, discovering an amazing food court on the upper level which we decided to return to for dinner. Then our next mission: to get my nails done for New Years! I hadn’t had my nails done since Bali, so I really needed to get them done and what better time than the day before New Year’s Eve? We stopped at one of the make-up counters where I tried some different foundations and got a tip to visit a Nail Art Studio around the corner. We flipped through the art examples they had there, and Henk picked out a spiderman-esque design with jewels for me to get. It looked awesome!!





While we were waiting for my nails to finish, we watched a local news program on TV (completely in Thai) which we later gathered was about last year’s New Year’s Eve fires. Apparently, some of the clubs in Bangkok were so crowded that some people got severely burned after being trapped in them when they caught fire on New Year’s. We made a mental note to be careful for whatever we decided to do this year! We then returned to the mall and ate at a place on the food court level called Royal India. While a tad on the expensive side, they had a delicious butter chicken and taste naans for us to eat…

New Year’s Eve: For New Year’s Henk and I decided to go to what was supposed to be the biggest countdown celebration in Bangkok. This was located outside the giant CentralWorld mall, which we had to take the SkyTrain to get to. And boy, was it a big celebration! The place was totally crowded when we got there; there was barely any room to walk a straight line without being crammed next to people. We noticed that a lot of people were wearing colorful lit-up devil horns and wondered why… it’s not Halloween, after all! Hehe… Anyways, to escape the crowd and the heat generated by them, we decided to duck into the mall itself for some dinner. Up to another awesome food court, past floor after floor of cool things to buy we realized that Bangkok must have some of the best malls in South-East Asia! This one was awesome as well!





Henk gave our waiter the food order while I tried to find us some interesting drinks. I thought it would be fun to have some fruity mixed drinks for New Year’s, but the bar told me they were out of almost everything! Still, we ended up with a colorful pink drink with lychee and white rum. Not my favorite, but Henk enjoyed it. Then it was back out into the crowds… it was just an hour until midnight when we exited the mall. The celebration area itself was huge, but the stage and screens they had to show off the performers and entertainment for the evening was pathetically small.







While I’m not considered ‘short’ here in Asia, I wasn’t wearing heels for the evening so I couldn’t see anything at all – just the back of people’s heads. Annoyed by this, and the crowds and their heat, I thought it would be better if we found somewhere with a little more space. However, by that time it was close to the countdown. We stayed for the countdown to 2010 and saw the fireworks light up the sky before making our way towards the exit. Oh! I don’t know how many of you do this, but it is good luck to say “Rabbit, rabbit” as the first thing you say on the 1st of the month – so I did that as well.





Right next door from CentralWorld, we went into the (strangely, very fancy-looking) Holiday Inn for some AC and a bit more space. We sat down there, and quickly realized they were having an 80’s party for New Year’s! Henk and I grabbed some drinks, (whisky!) donned fun New Year’s hats and sat down to enjoy the music. I loved hearing the same songs my family used to play for our New Year’s celebrations. But something seemed a bit strange. Very quickly Henk noticed that most of the people around us… no, everyone around us was wearing a special bracelet for the party. It registered to us what had just happened: We had crashed another party! After our time in Sydney, I didn’t think we’d be at it again, unknowingly the party-crashers for a second time. Apparently, we’re becoming regulars in this field.





The party ended around 1 am – far too early in our opinion – and we decided to head back to the hostel. We slept in super late the next day, skipping out even on the idea of a New Year’s brunch. The only time we ventured out New Year’s Day was in the evening for dinner at a near-empty restaurant we found next door to the hostel. While the place itself was empty, we didn’t mind. It was peaceful and quiet after all the noise earlier in the day. I ordered a fish and chips (I’ve been trying to eat more fish) and Henk got another curry. The food was delicious! Pays to be the only customers in the place. While we were paying, I noticed two cool bracelets near the register. Henk’s been trying to collect interesting pieces from the places we’ve gone to and I pointed them out to him. When I did that, the owner grabbed the bracelets and gave them to us! A New Year’s gift for us!





Happy New Year’s 2010 everyone!!

Hope you all had a good one. Please comment, and let us know what you did to ring in the New Year.

Francesca