A Leisurely Start

At least one purpose of vacation out to be practicing relaxation.  All the tours and information overload was starting to wear on us, especially since we were still in recovery for jet lag. As a result, we decided to do a slow start on Saturday and told Sam not to show up for us before noon.

This didn’t mean that we slept until noon, of course. We were up 5ish, just like normal. We did take time over our coffee, though, and went for a more leisurely start to the day.

Breakfast in the hotel is American style – scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, coffee. Nothing unusual there, but it is very good. It’s included with the hotel, and they have two English language newspapers available as well as a couple in Thai. They have the big headlines and even some of the same comics we're used to seeing.

No Dear Abby column, though.

After breakfast, we left the hotel in search of toothpaste and a place to change American money for multi-colored Thai Bahts which are also multi-sizual - bigger bills mean bigger money.

We got some cash out of the safety-deposit box at the desk and set off on our errands. At the bank up the street, though, we found out that they wouldn’t take one of the $100 bills because it was the “old style”.  We took that to mean that the bill appeared "old and worn" -- not unlike us at this point. Never thought about which bills to take, but will certainly consider that in the future.

To give you some perspective, $100 US buys about 3000 Baht.  The easy calculation on cost is divide by three and screw with the decimal.

Toothpaste proved elusive. Although there are 7-Elevens, Handy-Marts, Family Marts, and a variety of other convenience stores, they all sold large size goods instead of the more convenient travel size. We finally ended up with a tube of “Salt and Herb” Colgate.

At noon, we met Sam and were on our way. Well, actually it was closer to 1:00, since there was a major sporting event going on and traffic was approaching gridlock throughout the center city.