3 Nights in Bangkok…

…and the world’s your oyster.  Or, in this case, the mall and open air Thai architecure replica park are our oysters.

After a late afternoon flight, we got up early to tour a few of our favorite malls in Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit (Bangkok’s actual name).  The super fancy supermarket at the food court had super fancy huge fruit.

Take a look at them apples.

We’re not in Kansas anymore.

The Christmas spirit is alive and well in this consumerist city.

With their #1 hit, it’s Big O and the Siblings!

We were enjoying the neighborhood at Saigon Paragon and it’s suburbs to experience Kidzania, a Mexican-owned family entertainment center where youngsters “work” various adult jobs and earn fake money.  The Little Lady started off learning how to pilot a plane, then became a surgeon, went to driving school, and rounded out her experience with firefighting and soccer playing.

The Big O dove into selling insurance.

To his sister.

And she bought it!  Then she went to med school…

…and removed her first liver.

The Eldest enjoyed the charade, though he truthfully wasn’t as into it, preferring instead to continue plowing through Harry Potter.  That is, after he became a CSI investigator (“It was mostly in Thai…”) and scaled the face of some building.

(Not really sure what the “adult job” is for this one.)

The Little Lady is officially running for office.

This is how we roll on the skytrain.

You might be interested in what The Little Lady was working on, exactly:

Quiz Time!

Which of these is the creepiest?

 

Day 2:  We patronized Ancient Siam, “the world’s largest outdoor museum” (built by an eccentric Thai millionare and home to 116 replicas of famous Thai buildings) because we like our history fake and easily accessible.

The idea is that you can either ride the tram around the grounds, take a free bike (whoopee!), or golf cart it.  Sarah and I were outfitted with a couple of the (unfortunately scarce as you’ll soon find out) cycles with seats over the back wheels for the twins while The Eldest rode his own.  The weather was gorgeous, and our plan worked swimmingly until we stopped for lunch at the (recreated) floating market.

Technically, plenty of it actually was floating, and we bought lunch, so it is a market, thus, perhaps, it isn’t so fake after all.

We returned to our parking spots to find our bikes had been pilfered.  Such is the problem with a socialistic system.  When things are free but said things are not equal, said things get taken.  No fear!  We trekked back to the front entrance and got another two bikes for two.  And then we stumbled upon this place:

 

The Big O decided to get really into meditating, so by the time we dragged him away our bikes were nowhere to be found, again.  Blast!  The place was pretty awesome, but its sharing economy was a bit too sharing.  We resorted to the public transportation option and trammed to the (fake) Grand Palace.

After immersing ourselves in the beauty of fake jobs and fake buildings we decided to head north to a real national park to interact with some actual wildlife.  Will it work?  Or will someone steal all the wildlife before we get to ogle it?

Stay tuned!

 

– Warren