All hail consumerism

20/5/11

We have finally left Luang Probang. We jumped in a tuk tuk and headed to the airport well more shed with an air strip. All airports should be like this. One check in counter 5 flights a day no long waits, sit outside until its time to board your plane. This backwater feel was wash washed away upon arrival at Bangkok.

After a month in sleepy Laos Bangkok was a frenetic reintroduction to Aisa. This is the land of consumerism. Shopping centers connect to one another and for 3 sky train stops this is all you can see. Cars rule on the ground, sky walkways or trains take pedestrians and its hot so hot and sticky. We were told that there are only two types of weather here- outside and inside and AC building or train- I now know why people joked that we may just want to spend a day riding the sky train. Its cheep and its got sub artic air conditioning!

Being in the land of capitalism we decided we had better consume something. Liking to double up on our activities we decided to consume both finically and physically and headed to our local seven story shopping center for dinner. Think Trafford center but much bigger and connected to three more Trafford centers with every conceivable shop, cinema, activity you can imagine. You could have 10 meals a day, coffee on tap, a face life, foot spar, shop for a full wardrobe and house full of furniture and soft furnishings, have your teeth whitened and even have some surgery. The only limitation being money and time but don’t worry its open every day and there is a significant middle class here combined with lots of tourists to keep the cash registers ringing. From my tone you may assume I did not like it but amazingly it was ok. With such expanses of space combined with AC and a complete lack of shopping for three months it was ok. James on the other hand thought he was in heaven and decreed that the next day would be spent enjoying the Thai national pastime as he was board of his clothes… more on that later.

Anyway back to dinner. We found an all you can eat sushi type restaurant. We took out ticket and waited to be served. Our number was called but someone got in before us so we planted ourselves in the way until we were seated. The wait was worth it as we were shown to our seats given a pot of steaming water connected to a hot plat and allowed to consume for 1hr 15 minutes. All manor of food came round on the conveyor belt and we selected what we wanted, put it in our pot to cook it and then ate it with a whole range of condiments including the hottest wasabi paste I have ever eaten- a pin prick sized amount gave a strong physical reaction with your nose and mouth burning and eyes watering. Watered down with Soy sauce it was lovely but on its own lethal.