We arrived at Classic Place Hotel around 2:30 am. I bid goodbye to Anna and paid the taxi fare. I went to reception to get my room key and then went to the other building where my room was. Once I got there, the bellboy who helped me with my bags kept smiling at me and stayed in the doorway. Then I remembered: I was supposed to tip him! I am not used to tipping at all and so I asked him how much I should tip him. I thought I heard him say the number 2 and I tried to give him 5 baht. Hahaha! The expression on his face was priceless
 it’s a good thing he didn’t get offended (or maybe he did he just kept a really good job of not showing it). So he said 2 dollars and I did a little math and looked for 60 baht. I was still not familiar with their money and I fumbled around. He probably saw 2 20’s so he said 40 baht is enough. So I gave him 40 baht. Whew! At last he said “sawadee krup” and closed the door!

At around 3:30 am I had unpacked and sorted my finances. I wanted to go to sleep badly but since I knew there was a locale of our church in Bangkok and worship service was at 5:30 am, I decided I had better stay up. I left the hotel again at 4:45 and with map in hand, asked the guard to call a taxi. I barely made it since we got lost and the driver had to go and ask some people on the streets for directions. But anyway, I’m glad I was able to make it. I’m not used to missing church at all.

After the service, around 6:30 am, I decided to walk around and get to know this side of town. I was in the Sutthisan-Ratchada area and after walking for a few minutes I found an internet cafĂ©. This was a really unique cafĂ© (at least for me). I couldn’t figure out how to start surfing and so I talked to the guy who was in charge. He couldn’t understand me at first and so we did some hand signals and I got my message across. When he understood what I was trying to tell him, he smiled really big and showed me it was a coin operated computer! Hahaha! I found it funny too and I laughed. He changed my 20 baht bill to 10 baht coins so I could use one of the computers. So that’s how I got online in Bangkok. â˜ș

I went back to the hotel via their subway (the MRT) and here once again, I had to use hand signals to communicate to people. I got a couple hours of sleep and left again before lunch to pick up Christine at the airport. She was the girl I met in Manila with Rhea and Romeo. I didn’t want to take a taxi to the airport since I figured there’s going to be traffic. I decided to take the MRT to get to their Sky Train station (BTS) since the last station there appeared to be closer to Subvarnabhumi. So that’s what I did and it helped to make me familiar with their MRT and BTS systems and got a pretty good view of Bangkok as well. When I got off at the last station, I took a taxi to the airport. I realize now I probably took the longer route than if I just took the taxi from the hotel but then again I wouldn’t have been able to get to see Bangkok the way I did.

Christine and I went back to the hotel and tried to contact Tiw but to no avail. Tiw is the sister of my boss’ girlfriend. She was probably still in school the entire time we tried to call her. We didn’t know where else to go so we decided to ask around for directions to a mall. We met a nice young guy at the MRT station near our hotel and he took us to Siam Paragon Mall – a really gorgeous mall and this guy was saying earlier this was a mall on the low end. Wow! I couldn’t believe this was low end for him! People were dressed really nice and it was really cool! After he left us to do his thing, we had lunch in their food court. Another novelty for me was the food card you had to purchase first from a counter before you can buy from any of the food stalls there. Computerized and centralized. Really nice. They also had giant aquariums in the center and we sat down near one. After lunch, we headed upstairs and looked for an internet cafe to ask the office if Tiw had another number we can call or if they had my boss’s address. We got it and took the BTS to the station near his condo. It turned out nobody was there so we just left a message there for Tiw.

At the end of the day, we were really tired and we didn’t know where else to go so we decided to go back to the hotel to get some sleep and grab a late dinner somewhere later. Zzzzzzzz