Free day!

Te Tee had dubbed this our "free day", meaning that we had no touristy plans. We would be waiting for Alyssa's friend Taya to fly in that night before we started our Bangkok tours the following day. Alyssa wanted to meet up and have breakfast with Martinho (our friend that we had met in Brazil) who happened to be in town for work, so I met up with Jane and Te Tee at their hotel. We took the metro to one of the big malls and walked through, checking out the different shops and their massive food courts. They had so many delicious looking things that it was hard not to want to try them all!

Te Tee loves all of the different shopping areas and made sure to point them all out, even though none of us really did much shopping. It's pretty hard to shop when you have no space to carry anything and no money to spend, lol.

Jane and I were desperate to get massages, so we met up with Alyssa back at our hostel and went out in search of a good place. We settled on a place down the street that seemed cheap and signed in for an hour massage. Unfortunately massages are rarely hard enough for me (even though Thai massages are usually painful for most people) and these masseuses seemed to only focus on our calves. The massage was sub-par and didn't leave me feeling very relaxed afterwards, although the people who worked there were very nice. Jane didn't feel very satisfied either, so we decided we were going in search of another place to get an additional massage. Te Tee and Alyssa were done with massages, so they headed off to get some food. Jane and I found a nicer place (which was also more expensive) and decided to go for the two-hour Thai massage. This massage was much more professional- they brought us into a secluded room with music and dim lighting, unlike the earlier place which had just seated us all in the same loud room together. My masseuse was very good and could definitely give a hard massage. Jane doesn't like it to be that hard so she had to tell her masseuse a few times to lessen the pressure. After this massage I felt great and a little spoiled for having three hours of massage that day. Jane and I split up to go and shower at our respective hotels before we would all meet up for dinner.
We decided to try out some street food for dinner as it is often the most delicious. Te Tee took us to a great place where there are tons of restaurants all set up next to each other on the main street. We ordered way too much food of course, but it was all delicious and much of it Alyssa and I had never tried before. We particularly liked the morning glory, which was a new vegetable for us.

After dinner, we were supposed to go see a show but Alyssa needed to go meet Taya at the airport and we didn't think there'd be time to do it all. We decided to see the show another day and Alyssa grabbed the metro to head out to the airport. Te Tee, Jane and I decided to go to Patpong, which is a part of town where they sell all of the counterfeit items, to see if there was anything we wanted to buy. I had fallen in love with this Mulberry clutch that apparently usually costs $2,000. I had never heard of the brand Mulberry before, I just liked the little tree symbol that comes on it...lol. I priced it at a number of places but the price really varied based on the quality of the leather etc. I wasn't willing to pay more than $30 for it, so I didn't end up getting one. As we shopped, the cops showed up to make their rounds. It was hilarious to watch the vendors frantically pack up their counterfeit goods- some people only had one or two things left in their whole stall! Te Tee said that even though it is illegal to sell the counterfeit things, it is rarely enforced; they just tell the vendors to put those things away.
After a hard night of shopping, we stopped to get some boba tea. I love boba tea in the states, so I want to order one every time I see them here to try new flavors.

We headed back to our side of town via the metro. I left Te Tee and Jane at their hotel and continued back to the hostel to wait for Taya and Alyssa to return from the airport.

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