Shopping and Massages

I suppose my book title could also be something like Eat, Shop, Get Massaged.  Along with eating, we did A LOT of shopping.  Whether it be at various night markets, morning markets, all day markets, shopping malls, there was always something to buy.  I quickly gave up on the idea of returning home with just my pack.  There are just too many great things and wonderful deals here!  I have to admit, sometimes I'm not entirely sure whether I like something because I actually like it or because it's so cheap.  I guess I'll find out when I unpack all my treasures at home.

The hotel we were staying at (I'll get more into that in a later post) was right next to Patpong, a street notorious for its shows of all sorts.  It also has a large night market with the a very high concentration of knockoffs.  Louis Vuitton, Jimmy Choo and Tiffany seem to be favourites along with ripped off DVDs, which are surprisingly current.  This is a very touristed market and so good bartering skills are a must.  Even the best won't necessarily get the cheapest price you can get at other places in Bangkok.  Joe's aunt was certainly one of the best though.  She took us around Patpong one night to make a few purchases and we nabbed some amazing steals: sunglasses for 100 baht (around $3) and a couple of silk screened prints for me for 120 baht (down from 200).  As I suspected, I am a pretty bad barterer.  Sometimes I know I'm getting ripped off, sometimes not, but what it really comes down to is that I feel like a royal jackass fighting over two or three dollars with someone for whom that means more than a cup of coffee in their everyday life when I have voluntarily left a solid job to drop thousands of dollars on, essentially, a very long vacation.

Over the ten days, we hit up a few other nights markets along with the Platinum Fashion Mall and Chatuchak Market (an outdoor weekend market).  Both were overwhelmingly huge and busy.  You could easily spend DAYS wandering through either of them.

The other semi-regular event of my time with Joe's family was getting massages.  Joe's mum, Toy, has a regular person that she sees when she goes back to Bangkok, so this woman would bring along a few extra masseuses so that Joe, Joy and I could have massages as well.  Thai massage is nothing like the Swedish relaxation massages that are the norm back home.  Much more involved with deeper tissue massage and limb manipulation.  During my first massage, I took a quick peek to see just what was going on to find that I had a tiny little Thai woman standing on the backs of my legs.  It does feel quite good in the end even if there is a little pain along the way!

I had three massages in that week and a half, such a hard life I've been living, I know.  And a couple of them were two hours to boot.  It had never even occurred to me to have more than a one hour massage before I came here.  I didn't feel too guilty about it either since Joe's mum and sister were usually having three hours!  (Really, how can you resist at $7 an hour?!)

Okay, enough with that, on to the interesting Thai stuff I got to do!!