the mountain and the wind: my bangkok diary: day 1

April 13, 2012 - 7AM - Lobby of Lub D Siam

Yesterday was my first day in Bangkok and I'm already in love with this city. Oh, by the way, Thailand is pronounced as Tai-land (silent "h") -- unless you wanna call it the land of thighs.

This is where we we are staying...

The Lub D Siam is a top-rated hostel that's also frequented by western tourists. It stands at the heart of Bangkok.

It's the coolest place ever.

This is our chic dorm room.

The stairs.

View from the veranda: The National Stadium sky train station.

Thailand pretty much looks like the Philippines and Bangkok looks like Manila, except that Bangkok is much cleaner. Their vehicles here don't produce smoke, similar to the other places I've been to like North Carolina, Hong Kong, and Macau. I also noticed that there are Indian influences in Thailand's art and architecture. It's like Thailand has a combination of Chinese, Malay, and Indian culture.

The Tuktuk.

I didn't know that the Siamese Cat... is actually Thai. Lol.

As for the language, I have heard locals say "no English," which is so different from the PI, where almost everyone understands English, even the tinderas and the jeepney drivers. But so far, we haven't really had difficulty with regard to communicating with the locals. And by we, I mean Oli and Ai and me. Connet wasn't able to come, which is a bummer. But actually, I'm not so bummed because right now, in Bangkok, there are tons of sizzling locals and Caucasian tourists. Yum.

They look like this...

And this...

Have I told you that my favorite color is purple? =P

But we aren't really here for the boys. We're here to celebrate our ten years of friendship! Yup! It's been ten years since I've met my wonderful friends, when we started out as staff in our college newspaper, The UPLB Perspective. Now that we have money (well, kinda...), we decided to celebrate it outside Manila. =)

Oli and I came from Manila, while Ai came from SG. Ai waited for us in the BKK airport for 4 hours so that's why she was so elated when we finally arrived.

The reason we chose Bangkok as our destination is because we are a huge fan of the movie, The Love of Siam, and we are so infatuated with its lead actors (Pchy and Mario) that we decided to get a glimpse of them. Unfortunately, we are a day too late for the premier night of Pchy's latest movie, Home. The pemier night happened the night before we arrived in Thailand, and it was held at a mall near our hostel. We're like: whaaatttt???

But the good thing is, we were able to watch Home last night at Siam Paragon. And guess what, it has English subtitles! I almost clapped in the cinema because I prepared myself to watch it without the subtitles and only hoped to get the context clues of their actions.

And you know what? The film was awesome. It was funny and romantic and full of heartaches. I wanted to cry like a baby after watching it. It helps that the cast is so gorgeous.