We flew off on Jetstar on Thursday night and returned on Monday night, everyone with at least (yes, at least) an extra piece of baggage. What did we do and where did we do all that?

Accommodation:
We stayed at Best Western Mayfair, situated near Platinum Mall. However, the back street location was kinda isolated. To get to and fro the main road, we had to get on the hotel tuk tuk sometimes flashing the world whilst wearing short skirts. Seow, Xiu Ru and I shared one room. I never saw such a variety of toiletries before. An extra foldaway bed was requested but deemed to hard for the body to rest on, hence, it was dubbed ‘the dirty bed’. We all slept on the king sized bed and were perfectly comfortable. The hotel room was generally clean and pleasant though we had abit of issues with the card keys not working most of the time and the toilet loo being defunct (it could also be due to overactivity, oops!)

Breakfast was alright. There was not so much of a spread but then it was a very small hotel. Actually, I only ate breakfast one morning and slept through all the other days (along with Miss Chng), a vacation must allow time for rest.

Food:
Generally, we ate at food courts in the shopping mall. I always opt for my favourite pork noodles, the Thai love their pigs and the glass noodles are oodles of yum. We did eat waffles and what nots at Chatuchak market, the girls devoured their coconut ice cream served in a tiny half coconut husk with a cup of coconut juice. But no pork balls from the dirty road side stalls or insects on a skewer for Xiu Ru though the edible wares in which the road side hawkers were serving were looked on by rather desirably.

We found a quaint little cafe squeezed between 2 stalls at Chatuchak called ‘Frame Cafe’ and squeezed ourselves around a tiny table. Vintage mirrors were hung all around with the names of various fizzy drinks in old school type fonts where Mel cam whored for Seow. The orders were mixed up but the phad thai I had was really yummy, though the portions are small. Never to fear, Xiu Ru and I had the dubious honour of finishing the left overs (yes, even with tiny portions, the girls cannot finish their food) (as she puts it, we are the boys when there are no boys around).

Two dinners were sort of at ‘road side’ zi char places, with a whole fish with lime chili sauce, some tom yum, various meats and grilled prawns (someone always craves for prawns). We realised that the Thai people have small appetites. Case in point, when ordering a serving of rice, it came, precious grains i the exact shape of half a tennis ball. This is not exaggeration. The rice eaters would have a hard time in this country.

A&W! I missed you. Your curly fries and root beer floats. The dreams about lost childhood. But for some reason, the A&A at Pantip Plaza did not have Coney Dogs. (Blasphemy!) I had the fried chicken strips and Xiu Ru the fried chicken whole (when I was typing chicken, I actually typed children first, fried children, hmmmmm).

Mister Donut was fabulous as usual. Actually, I could not tell because I wolfed down the donut I bought on 2 separate occasions within 1 minute. I bet it was very good.

Muay Thai:
Trooping down to Lumpini Stadium on a taxi cab driven by an extremely friendly driver with limited command of English who told us not to eat the local food that we were drooling at from the vehicle. By his hand actions, we were conveyed the message that we would puke if we ate from those stalls. Upon alighting from the cab, those selling tickets immediately descended upon us but we insisted that we were looking for V.

In the end, we did not get our ring side tickets from the illusive V but still managed to get them for 1,600 Baht. The effect of being ripped off just a little less severe, I hope. A sticker was slapped onto us and we went through a security check where our bottle of water was poured into cups for us to bring in. I think that they do not allow us to bring in bottles perhaps there has been a history of angry punters throwing bottles into the ring when frustrated.

The atmosphere was total electrifying, abit like the WWE matches at used to play late at night on teevee. We walked in front of all the ringside seats as we were shown to the available seats. It was free-seating but almost all the rows were full except for the last row which suited us as Darren from Fight G told us to take the last rows to be able to take in all the action.

And action it was. The red corner was rather weak that night with all the red losing their matches. It was 5 rounds of 3 minutes and the first 2 rounds seem to be warm up though. The tempo picked up on the third rounds though and they were moving their limbs so quick like in fast forward. I realised the importance of push kicks and Siew pointed out how they did not even bother blocking the roundhouses but just took it. One very loud punter would start yelling insults at the red during the break between the third and fourth round. A group of people would gather at the red and blue corners and give some advice on what they think the fighter they were betting on should do to get more points. When you turned around, there was a sea of people all on their feet with their hands gesturing like mad towards the punters to place their bets. It was a great ball of activity and energy with the live ‘band’ that would play during each round.

We saw blood when one fighter got cut above his eye. The crowd gets increasingly excited with each round. Against Darren’s advice, we had to visit the toilet during the last match and pleasantly found the loos to be much less terrifying than he had described. My logic because much less women watched muay thai than men. However, our toilet outing caused us to miss out on the only K-O for that night.