Still no pictures. Ack! By hook or by crook, I will take the camera with me tomorrow and get some pictures of the neighborhood to show you.
Josh and I had a relatively fun weekend. We attended the annual Diplomatic Red Cross Bazaar at the Siam Paragon shopping center (http://www.siamparagon.co.th/. If you're viewing the page now, you may get a splash page which is a memorial tribute to HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana, the King's older sister who passed away recently; the country is observing a 100-day mourning period, and lots of Thai websites have similar tributes.) The Paragon is an amazing mall with an aquarium in the basement, an IMAX theater, an exhibition hall and lots of shops and restaurants (including a huge Kinokuniya bookstore, which Josh and I love!)
The Red Cross Bazaar is an annual event which most of the foreign embassies in Thailand (as well as lots of shops, restaurants, etc.) participate in to raise money for the Thai Red Cross. Each country typically sells characteristic products: clothing, food, wine, cosmetics, handicrafts, you name it. I volunteered at the US's booth (run by the Embassy's ACSA/Commissary) on Saturday evening: we were selling American candy and soft drinks, cosmetics and household goods, but the Igloo coolers were most popular and were selling like hotcakes, especially the big wheeled ones! (Coolers like that are hard to find in Thailand and are typically marked up a lot-- the ones sold at the Bazaar were still more expensive than the US, but cheaper than you can find elsewhere.)
We both went back on Sunday and spent some time wandering around. I was able to find a refill for my Dermalogica skin-care products (hooray!) and we bought a really nice inlaid chess-set/backgammon board from the Syrian booth for only 2000 baht, which is a steal! (I leave the conversion to USD as an exercise to the reader.) We also bought a beautiful ceramic ewer from the Pakistani embassy (which happens to be practically next door to our apartment, near the hospital) that will look appropriate for our reenactments.
We also took the opportunity to be served yak butter tea by one of the princesses of Bhutan, which was a cool experience!
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Hey! No fair! You can't blog: "We did some stuff, then some other stuff. Then we met a princess." Care to elaborate on the last sentence? Like, how did you end up in the royal tea-house?
Yeah, that was a cop-out! Okay, so the full story isn't much to tell-- we wandered by the Bhutanese booth and they were selling various crafts as well as food and drink (iced coffee, chocolate, etc.) One of the things on offer was traditional butter tea, which we had both heard about but never had a chance to try, so we decided to get some. One young woman poured out a cup for us and went to heat it up, and the lady manning the booth, while telling us all about butter tea, mentioned that the young woman getting our tea was one of Bhutan's princesses, who had flown in to visit Thailand and help with the bazaar.
We ended up chatting with her a little bit, asking her about some of the clothing, etc. on display. She was very nice and down-to-earth, and spoke excellent English-- just an all-around, nice college-age girl.
The current king of Bhutan is a year younger than me; actually, I believe he is the youngest head of state in the world at the moment. He has five sisters (whole and half), the oldest of which is his age, I believe. I don't know which one we met.
Oh, and the butter tea was actually pretty good-- tasted kinda like chicken soup. I can see how it would really warm you up on a cold day up in the mountains. Of course, this is Bangkok, so we won't be needing a lot of it.
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