Everybody agreed that this was the best day of the trip so far--we reached a consensus and there were no dissenters.

But it sure didn't start out that way, as Sunday morning was a real low point. We woke up a little before noon, wiped the regret from our eyes, and stumbled our way down to the street.

We made our way through the stifling heat to our favorite pad see ew vendor a block away, and proceeded to sit there for an hour while we debated what to do for the day.

Hungover, sweating, and in desperate need of a bathroom, we were left with few options for the day. Temples? If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. Day trip? Too late. Literally anything outdoors? No thanks, I can’t keep going through three shirts a day.

We lost Mengs to an upset stomach, but the rest of the crew got our shit together enough to make something out of our day. We decided to take tuk tuks to Chatachuk Market, the biggest covered market in Thailand, which provided a fun way to see the city and a solid activity for us to do.

We set about the never-easy business of arranging transportation for the trip there. Our first driver offered us a price of 150 baht...if we made one stop at his sponsor. Apparently, tailors and other bootleg stores offer tuk tuk drivers free gas coupons for bringing in customers.

"15 minutes only!"

"No."

"5 minutes only!"

Heard that one before.

We went across the street, received a price quote of 150, and got in the tuk tuks, ready to go.

"We make one stop!” our driver announced.

Fuuuck. Figuring we were out of luck and not wanting to take a cab, we eventually bargained our way down to a free ride to the market, with one stop.

Was it stupid? Yes. Were we getting scammed? Yes. But hey...Bangkok. And the ride turned out to be hilariously memorable.

We stopped at a tailor a few minutes away, and sat down for the pitch. After about five minutes, when it became clear that we weren't buying suits, the guy basically kicked us out, and we got back in the tuk tuk.

"One more stop??" The driver pleaded with us.

"NO."

He continued to pitch another stop, but after a number of harsh denials, he eventually just took us to the market.

The market itself was pretty cool: like the other markets/bazaars we'd seen on steroids, selling everything from food to cosmetics to massages to clothing to watches to pet supplies.

After that, we took the BTS Skytrain metro system to a shopping district. Taking the subway in a new city is always a fun experience, and this was a nice Asian metro: very clean, air conditioned, open, and fast, a nice contrast with the tuk tuk we took to get to the market.

We got off at an elevated station surrounded by several massive shopping malls. The first one we entered, Siam Paragon, was a massive, 8 story mall full of luxury brand stores. It was cool to see this other side of Bangkok, and served as a nice reminder of how huge and diverse the city was.

We moved from the high-end mall to an equally massive medium-end mall before arriving at the promised land: MBK, a gigantic mall containing miles of stalls selling the same useless shit that we'd seen at every market--only indoors (which was perfect because the afternoon thunderstorms had started).

It was great. We bought gifts for mengs, snacked at the food court, and eventually made our way to the top-floor arcade.

The arcade was yet another example of the modern Asian metropolis side of Bangkok: bright lights, loud noises, and weird Asian guys obsessively focused on their video games. We had a great time racing, playing pop a shot, and testing our strength at a punching bag game.

On our last night in Bangkok, we wanted to have a nice dinner along the riverfront, so headed off for Asiatique, an open air mall along the river.

Our transportation woes continued, as we repeatedly failed to get any cabbie to use the meter, so paid up for the ride to Asiatique.

The mall looked like a normal American outdoor mall. We ended up eating at an outdoor restaurant in the mall's food court, nowhere near the river.

The highlight came when we want down to the malls riverfront area after dinner, which contained a large Ferris wheel and an amusement park called Future World.

Future World featured transformer suits that you could walk around and fight your friends in, plus weird lunar buggys that rocked back and forth and that you steered around an open lot. We took a ride in the lunar buggys, and they were a blast. There was an entire staff dedicated to making sure we didn't crash into each other, so obviously we tried as hard as possible to hit each other's buggys, and when that failed, to running over the staff.

Finally, Silbs, Theo and I ended our night with a memorable cab ride. Practically as soon as we got in the cab, it started sputtering. We weren’t alarmed yet—we’d had our share of sketchy cab rides—but then we noticed that the cab’s fuel gauge was empty. We pointed this out to the driver, but he was completely unfazed, laughing us off and continuing to drive, apparently unconcerned about running out of gas. The car’s lack of gas, though, did mean that it was difficult to stop and start up again, so we kept making turns at red lights to keep our momentum going. Eventually, after a lot of sputtering, we decided to get out in the middle of an eight-lane boulevard, and complete the journey home on foot.

Overall, what started out as a miserable day actually ended up being one of our best. It was a rare day where we were completely unstructured and just did random activities that we wanted to do. We weren’t doing touristy stuff or viewing temples, but were just going to markets and shopping malls as normal Thai people might, and got a really good glimpse of the many facets of Bangkok that we may not have gotten had we cut our Bangkok stay short or done a larger excursion. Plus, we got a healthy dose of our trademark stupidity, from the tuk tuk rides to the arcade competition to the cab ride home.

Thanks Bangkok for the adventures, but we are all ready to relax on the beaches in the south.

- Justin