travelduo back from bkk
 

hello everyone we are back from bkk!!!!! and not too happy about it, this time it was so sad to leave!!!! but we did have a nice dinner with an expat from the US and helped us get some basic plans laid out for our FUTURE move :) we will write out a full trip report but now have to go to jail(for work). a few quick notes, Tong was AWESOME and will hopefully come see us in october when she comes to the states, basil cooking school was great, jack made us some awesome clothes, we met bob and karen on thier last day but couldnt find them again when it was picture time(our fault) we slept thru the GTG at toungue thai so sorry we didnt make it! bed supper club was NOT worth $100 at all!!! we didnt fit in at all even tho it was models night and april and I are both good looking, lol. we wont be back there again! muay thai boxing was cool even tho the police got called in, that made it cooler! the new aquarium at paragon was awesome, and we are big diver/aquarium and we were impressed! wearing the yellow shirt on monday will get you better service. thai people pick their nose in public a lot( that was aprils thought), also the concept of taking turns is not a thai kind of thing to do. april said that feeding the monkeys with tong was her favorite part and they devised a plan so that only people from fodors will get to go to the secret place so it can stay secret :) we went to church and this year threre were almost twice as many people as last year. anyway we will write a real trip report later, we didnt write down how much we paid for the taxis or tuk tuks so it wont be as in depth as Bobs :) thanks to everyone here for your help.

Welcome home! I'm looking forward to your report. I'm always glad to hear from someone else who is thinking about moving to Thailand!

kathie we cant wait to move!!!!!! it is a way off tho. our new friend mark really helped a lot with all our questions.

Glad you had a great time with Tong. Sorry to have missed you at Tongue Thai.

There's a website with lots of ex-pat information. Don't remember the URL, but it was mentioned on Fodors about 1-2 years ago. I looked at it then and it seemed useful.

Bed Supper Club...$100? I was there last December and paid the equivalent of about $28.00 for the set meal. Happy Travels!

Yes, it was $100 for the two of us at Bed also because we ordered a bottle of wine. We thought the food was good but not exceptional, we had a good time, we wouldn't do it again.

The night I went to Bed for dinner, the food was exceptional. Fish was served and it was perfect. Happy Travels!

We are glad someone had a better time than us! maybe we just ordered the wrong thing. we also might of had the wrong mind set going in. we live in missouri and i dont think there is a place anywhere close to us that we could spend $100 for dinner, and we were thinking that if we spent that much it would of been better than it was. it also could of been that the CEO of Del Monte Foods was right next to us and he and his group got a little more attention than us ;)

And for us, we figure we can get food cooked perfectly lots of places in Seattle for $100. We expected the food to be exceptional for that price in Bangkok, but found it pretty bland. We had a good time (but then, generally, I think we carry our good time with us) but there was nothing exceptional about Bed for me.

We dropped at least $100 with tip last February on our 3 course meal at Bed - Jeane had two of those fruity alcoholic drinks and I had a couple of beers.

OK...so it was the drinks that pushed the price up so. I just had water. I went when there was a fixed menu. They did bring me one dish that was on the fixed menu since I don't eat meat. There was some kind of salad with meat, so they made me a different kind of salad which was delicious. That was for the first course.
The night I went...a Friday...I think...the music was tops...sort of remix R&B 70s...couldn't have been any better. The only thing that ruined the experience was, at the end of the evening, when the French model and her half Thai/half French boyfriend sitting at the table tray next to me lit up a cigarette. It was just like being in Paris.That was the only lit cigarette in the whole upstairs area. My two Thai friends were not happy to say the least and so we left earlier than we had wanted to. Happy Travels!

It cost Eric and I about $85.00 for our dinner in Bed. We had a couple of beers a piece.

loved meeting you, only sorry you were delayed so we could not have that long breakfast we had counted on...

we were late coming down to the lobby so that may be why we missed each other....i just thought you were like guenmai and refused to have your pics taken....haha

glad you saw the monkeys....i went there with a monkey, aka gpanda...

I heard that, Bob! And you probably thought I wasn't even listening...but I have ears/eyes everywhere. Ha...Ha...Ha...and Bob, where's my e-mail list? I e-mailed you last week. A mind is a terrible thing to lose! Happy Travels!

Were are sorry we missed you to bob! we kept thinking we were in the wrong place!

the monkeys were awesome!! after about 20 minutes with them tha=ey all scattered into the trees then we heard this huge animal running thru the forrest, April freaked out thinking it was some huge jungle cat coming to eat us in the boat!!!! it was a dog;)

in retrospect i am not sure i would want to be that close to the monkeys again....one jumped in our boat and grabbed karen's brest as she clung to some bannanas.....hightlight of her trip...

i have tons of pics which i will share sometime soon

Karen was probably hoping the monkeys would kidnap her and provide some time away from Bob.

well i guess i should go ahead and get started on the actual trip report.
first, who we are. jeffrey and april dunlap from kansas city, we own an interpreting business here and i have a son that is 6. this was our second trip to thailand, the first ended 2 weeks before the tsunami( we were also in london 2 weeks before the bombings!) my best friend since school is thai and is a first generation american thats why we chose to go to thailand in the first place. this time we decided to stay in bkk the entire time, mostly because my friends family all knew that we were coming and if we went to see one of them we would have to see them all. the only one we really wanted to see was his aunt and uncle who have a HUGE place up north but that would hurt everyones feelings if we only went there. we started planning the trip 6 months ago. i was on flyertalk.com everyday trying to figure out the best flights for us. if you have never seen that site you should check it out. with their help we now have elite status on AA just from this one trip and have enought FF miles to get 2 biz class seats to OZ next year! our flight was mci-dfw-nrt-bkk and back. even with all that planning we still missed the connection in nrt because of an equiptment change in dfw and we had to stay in an airport hotel in narita(not fun), but with the help of the flyertalk people AA is going to compensate us very good for that. so we had to fly into bkk on SQ, that was nice but we missed our breakfast with bob and karen. our flight landed at 2 and we got to the hotel at 330. there was an 18 year old backpacker from canda next to us on the flight and he had NO CLUE where he was going or were he was going to stay so he took the cab with us to the marriott and we put him on the boat to the sky train. checked into our regular room then went to see jack. it was great to be back in his place. he was very excite that i had sent him a pic of me wearing his suit when i interpreted for the vice president. we ended up spending $1000 and both my wife and I ended up with so much he had to ship it to the US for us!!!! we then went down to eat at SP where bob and karen easily found us because a: i am 6'3" b: we were the onlt ones without our yellow shirts on! it was so good to finally meet in person and we had a great bite to eat. we then missed our re hook up with B&K so we went to get massages at the place next to jacks. it was only ok, the onther people we used later were MUCH better!!!! after that we were DONE!!! went to bed and fell asleep quickly on that wonderful marriott mattress!!!

will type more later, got to get to sleep, its just me and the 6 year old since my wife flew to SLC for the weekend.

good start....anxious to read more...

bob

ok now the second day.

we woke up at 5am ( jet lag sucks!) then just layed around for a long time, finally made it down to breakfast, and it was just as we remembered!!!! then took the sky train to siam and started to walk to mbk, along the way this nice looking guy stopped us, but first i need to explain a little first. my wife is perhaps the nicest person that has ever lived on this planet and is also very gullible(sp?) for example, before we went to vegas the first time i told her not to talk to anyone on the street or to take anything from the people trying to give you things on the sidewalk, and what does she do? as soon as we walk out of our hotel the porno card people hand her a prostitute card and she takes it!! as i look on and she reads it, she turns and says" this is porno stuff!!!!!" the whole trip went downhill from there she got us almost conned into so many things that i had to tell this one guy that we didnt bring our credit card and could go on his tour, to which my wife replied" you didnt bring a credit card to vegas?" so now that you know that, back to bkk.

as the nice looking guy approaches my wife says hi and then the con is on! i had to make up something about having an appt and we couldnt go into the best diamond shop in bkk! i think april kind of understands what she need to do now.

after that we finally made it into MBK, i had been waiting to get to bkk to get my haircut, and did so first thing. for $10 it was great. i would of paid that for the head massage at home!! april got her nails done as she waited. after that it was shopping time, we had brought 2 extra suitcases just for the presents we were going to buy. and also bubble wrap becs someone here said to do that awhile back, i forgot who, but it was a great idea! we shopped for hours and ate lunch there, it was much nicer than 2 years ago, and still cheap. after that went to paragon, i had read on here about it a little so we decided to go on over. i had no idea that just about every place there was a luxury store, if there wasnt one, we didnt see it. nothing fit our midwest/ red neck taste. but we did decide to come back to the aquarium later on in the trip. took the skytrain back to see jack at 3 for first fitting. i had 2 different types of suits made so had to have 2 diffferent guys for the fittings. i will post the pics of it soon, but i look like a giant next to these guys!!! after that we decided to keep our reservations to bed supper club, took the taxi there and used the meter because i told him in thai that i wanted him to, he wasnt happy. the dinner was uneventful and was $100, the models were fun to look at, and so was the huge group of thai guys and one old white dude in the middle of them that they were all falling for. they didnt want to bring us our check and kept telling us to wait for the fasion show at 1130. no way, we were way too tired for that! it was raining when we left and took the taxi back to the marriott, was out like a light in minutes!!!!


more tomorrow, i am beat after playing laser tag with a bunch of 6 year olds for 2 hours!

Wow - that's impressive - told him to use the meter in Thai? I had to go back and read that the 2nd time!

Well my best friend is thai and some of his family speaks no english so I have had a lot of practice. Plus the wife and I are both interpreters so languages come somewhat easier for us :) last time I got tired of the cabbies taking us for a ride so I decided to talk like some of my expat friends do and it has worked great!
But that thai language is tough! Itis so tonal and sometimes I end up saying I'm very greedy instead I'm very good!

I've enjoyed your report so far.
I'm still shaking my head over speaking Thai for the taxi - even if you have a Thai friend. Bet your intrepreting business doesn't get a lot of calls for Thai in Kansas City.
Looking forward to the rest of the report.

ok so on to thursday. we woke up really early agin, jet lag still sucks, and went down to breakfast. we decided to go to the flower market, this wasnt on our list that day, but neither was waking up so early! the guys at the front desk told us to take the express boat to the market and showed us which stop to get off at. well we got on the boat just fine and i thought that we had paid to get all the way there, i guessed wrong, this woman comes down the middle of the boat shaking this change tube thing, here is where speaking some elementary thai comes in handy becuase i dont think she spoke a lick of english, i finally figured out that the stop we needed the boat didnt stop at! so we had to get off that boat and onto another one, along with almost every other commuter that morning!!!! april tried to take a picture of the throng of people, but ended up with only a picture of this woman picking her nose right in front of the camera. we finally made it to the right stop and walked to the flower market. im not sure what i expected, but what we saw wasnt it. we did buy some bamboo and a couple other small things. april bought some pineapple like she always does but this time it came with a packet of sugar, salt, chili stuff, i oved it, she hated it. we just walked and walked until we ended up in some other market area. it was mostly clothes and we bought our son an U.S Army outfit( he wants to be a navy seal when he grows up and loves anything army related). as usual none of the clothes fit me at all. there was also a ton of bras hanging around, i told april she would have to buy 2 to wear at the same time becuase she has an american sized chest. she didnt laugh. this place also had a lot of gun stores, again i had no clue where we were. april bought a pepsi in a bag, she always thinks thats funny for some reason. finally took a cab back to the hotel for a nap. then went back to paragon and to the aquarium, it was a little more expensive than i thought it would be, but it was well worth it!!!!! we only spent an hour there but could have spent much longer. all the exhibits were very well done and was great for adults and kids alike. afterwards we took the skytrain to the sheraton grande for our cooking class. it was awesome!! it was just the 2 of us in the class, we(I) cooked 6 dishes and april broke a bowl. i have been trying to cook thai in our home but now really know how to do it the right way!!! it was about 2.5 hours and well worth the $100 for both of us. basil looks like a awesome place to eat, not just to the cooking class. has anyone eaten in the rooms with the closed doors? after that we went across the street and some some beers at this beer bar with our ex pat friend mark. it was very cool to learn about his life now, april liked how they let the dogs lay all over the floor so she took pictures of that!! we left when the "band" started, the lead singer looked like an asian version of the guy from Twisted Sister!! weird. we had to hurry back to see jack at 8 for another fitting we were a few minutes late but then so were they. do cap off the day we had massages in our room. i fell asleep in the middle of mine so april and the 2 massage people had a good laugh at me while i slept. i woke up with my head in the guys lap!!!! it was a great way to end the day. i know that they dont like to come to your room for the massage until they know you a little but it was well worth it and more relaxing i nmy opinon since i can just go to sleep for real after its over!

loving the report..

bob

glad cooking was a good experience...we did eat in the main dining room which was nice but the service was terrible...maybe we will try the school another trip

Bob, i remember you told us that night we met that you didnt like the place so well.

we really had a great time meeting up with you 2. hope to make our way to boston sometime soon and see you!

ok so the next day was our best, it was the Tong day. But I am sure that you have read Bobs trip report so you know everything that we did that day. There was a few things that were different. First of all we didnt go to the orphanage, instead we went to the Deaf school. I had sent an email to Tong asking her to find this place for us, but didnt know if she really could or not. it was funny because she was so nervous while we were on the way there! she found if really quick and we went right to the office, it is really weird the first time you meet a person at a deaf school because you are not sure if they are deaf or a hearing teacher, and here in the US we always sign and talk at the same time, in english, but here we had to sign and speak thai at the same time! now that was weird! then we found out that most of the teachers there are hearing, and can speak english!!!!! i knew that their sign language was taken from ASL so we could communicate with the deaf kids. we had a shoer tour of the school and some of the history, then all of the kids started running up to us asking of we were really from america?????? i bet we answered that 25 times! we took a lot of pics and bought some cookies from the bakery in the school. this was one of the best parts of the whole trip!!! Tong is going to start taking people there who want to buy lunch for the kids but dont want to do it at the orphanage. dont be afraid to go, the teachers would love to have visitors and they all speak english great, most went to college here in the US at Gallaudet.

we also went to Tongs husbands optical shop, April bought some awesome glasses for a great price and Tong delivered them to our hotel 2 days later.

from there we went out to the secret place. its a bit of a drive, and Tong didnt stop talking the entire drive!!! if we were quiet for a minute she would ask if we were bored and not having fun? our experience there was the same as bob and andys, but we spent much more time with the monkeys!!!!! that is what April really wanted to do. we also spend a lot of time looking for the white monkey but didnt see him. we saw many"fish with feet" as tong called them, i call them mudskippers. the monkeys climbed in our boat and tried to steal more food, till Reed got them out. he really cares for "his" monkeys!!!! we had the dinner on the house with stilts, by now it was dark!!! we stayed ssssoooooooo late! on the drive back Tong and april were talking about keeping the secret place"secret" she they came up with a code word that you need to have if you want her to take you there;)

We cant say enough about Tong, she is an awesome guide and now a good friend, that hopefully will visit us this coming october!! plus she is going to save her daughter Pear for our son Parker :)

we finally got most of our pics up the kodak site, if you want to see them send me an e mail and i will give you the link. i cant figure our how to make the gallery totally public so everone can go there, so for now just email me and i will send you the link. [email protected]

loved the report and it was different from ours and better...

what does one have to do to learn the secret code?? lets not tell andy/gpanda....it will drive him over the edge...