My quest for quality Mexican is finally over. I can't believe it's taken this long, but I went to Chatuchak Green for the first time pretty recently. We were there to meet Chai, a friend of Stephan's. He runs a booth there that sells Mexican food. And wow, Chatuchak Green is quite the place. A massive night market, larger than anything I've seen so far in Thailand. Rivaling Shilin in scale, it's more geared towards eating and drinking than Chatuchak Market. Chai whipped up some nachos, tacos, and burritos for about $1-$2 each. That's what I'm talking about. Why does Mexican food need to be $5 a taco? It's one of the cheapest things in the world to make! It was pretty darn good, a little sweeter than I'm used to. Then again, Thais have quite the sweet tooth, so it doesn't surprise me he made it that way. I wish it wasn't so far from home, because I'm a big fan.

As in almost every weekend, Ella and I were looking for something to do. There was a Coffee Trade Show in town, which sounded fun. It was free to get in so that sounded exceptionally fun. Soon after walking in, one of the booths had an extensive menu of drinks with coffee in them, but I wouldn't exactly call them "coffee". I noticed a few of them were alcoholic. And so began my drinking spree at 10am. I got an Irish Coffee, which may have been one of the strongest mixed drinks I have ever had. 90% whiskey, it was an interesting start to the morning. While the rest of the convention didn't have the morning drunk vibe, there was far more than coffee there. Tons of sodas, fruit juices, and coffee-inspired products, I was proper hopped up on caffeine by the time lunch rolled around. For the grand total of 0 baht, it was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning.

We also got the chance to visit a museum often seen on Google Maps, but I have found no information on-line about. The Thai Labor Museum is an unassuming house out in an industrial part of town, next to a train station. Also free to get in, it was surprisingly well done and really should have far more visitors than it does. When looking at the guestbook, it averaged about one visit a day. Which kind of broke my heart, because the lady inside was super, super nice and really went out of her way to ensure we had a wonderful stay, despite her lack of English skills. I hope she doesn't live off of donations. But it should be much higher on travel sites. It's not going to blow your mind or anything, but it has lots of dioramas and authentic pieces from Thailand's history. Ella took a super long video of the whole place, so I suppose if you don't feel like visiting it yourself you can see that video I'm going to embed over here. Or over there. Over somewhere.

There was also a brief visit to the new re-opened Tubtim Shrine (previous entry here). Weird place, still full of penises. But not as many as there were previously. Since the whole purpose of this place is to see penises, I am unsure if that's a good or bad thing. Anyway, we checked it out at least. We also made a trip to Bang Pa In, the King's summer palace. I went to Bang Pa In one time, long ago, on one of my first weeks in Thailand. It was nice. I got there by riding on top of an ice cream truck, wearing a cowboy hat, and yelling at Chinese tourists. That story is here. Anyway, this time we took the train up, which is always a fun time in and of itself. For 14 baht, you can't really complain. It's by far the cheapest way to get around. As is so often the case with places like this, there isn't really too much I can say about it. It's pretty. There were lots of photos and same video. Here is some of them. I wonder when was the last time the King used this place? If I were some visiting dignitary, I would want to hang out here. It's very peaceful, and has a calm that Bangkok definitely does not have.

This blog was very video heavy, and that's something Ella and I have been doing more of lately. I remember back in Taiwan I did a few posts on different Taiwanese snacks at 7-11. I decided to do that again, and I collected some of the weirdest Thai snacks I could find. Then Ella and I sat around and ate them. So here's that video, if you ever want to know what Thai convenience store food is like.

Hello world. Are you all ready for President Donald Trump?

I got a touch of Trump class, recently. A friend of mine from the US had his parents visit Bangkok, and they were kind enough to invite Ella and I out to dinner. Always appreciated, but this really went above and beyond. They were staying at a hotel where 1 night was about 20% of my monthly salary. So, I really, really, hoped they were paying for dinner. Turns out yes. We had a great buffet, which although was good, I would have preferred street food. The one exception was the cheese bar. Oh, cheese! I've missed you! I think the hotel lost money on my ravenous cheese excursion. (Also, Ravenous Cheese Excursion would be a good band name) Still, one of the most luxurious nights I've ever had in Asia.

Some coworkers invited myself to karaoke, and... we'll just say "a friend" (not pictured) also came along, in case he prefers to stay anonymous. He sang Ylvis's amazing, "What's the deal with Stonehenge?", and we were all in tears of laughter afterwards. Especially my British coworkers, as I don't think they've ever heard it before. Overall it was a pretty great night. Friend and I decided at one point to go out on the terrace and have a chat. The soju was flowing, but overall the mood was a bit serious, reminiscent of those many late night drinking sessions I had at Ryan's place so long ago. One of the others popped their head out, and said "Hey, it's time for the last song."

Little did I know my night was about to get a little crazy.

So, Friend had been perfectly coherent and calm, mostly, up until that point. Then the switch in his mind flipped from "calm" to "I am Ethanolius, Destroyer of Sobriety". He jumped on tables, things were broken. On the way out he decided to go down the stairs ass first. He slammed into the glass door really hard, so hard in fact I was shocked when it wasn't broken. Outside, he proceeded to climb up the sign of this place. Again, surprised the sign didn't break. He fell into a pool of water and got his feeet soaked. Then he went back inside, and started messing with the security guards stuff. The gaurd was not pleased, and told us to leave. He wanted to go talk to some girls near the door, which required a great deal of physical restraint to avoid.

So before, I was just going to get him in a cab and send him on his way. It was quite clear there was no way in the world he would be able to accomplish that. So I flagged down a cab to come along. It began to slow down, then pulled away rapidly. I'm thinking "What the heck?" I turn around, and friend is just flat out lying on the sidewalk, making snow angels. Alright. So I flag down another cab. It slows down, and suddenly a rubber traffic cone flies over my head and hits the taxi. He speeds away. Now, in retrospect, like the rest of this story, that was hilarious. At the time I didn't think it was so funny. Well, okay. I thought it was pretty funny. Finally restraining him for a moment, we get a taxi. And it turns out he speaks fluent Thai when he's drunk, which was a surprise. But amazingly, we made it home.

After that little adventure, I was eager to step back a bit. So on a particularly lazy Sunday, I decided to document Ella and I's entire day for no reason other than I could. We decided we wanted to cook something for dinner. We rolled out of bed pretty late, and then went to get brunch at our local Myanmar restaurant.

There's really not many Myanmar restaurants in Bangkok. In fact, this is the only one I know of in the city. A shame, because it's really quite good and cheap. Their biryani especially, is amazing. After that, we needed to go grocery shopping. First we needed bread, so we visited this Syrian family that makes flatbread.

Then it was off to the Bangkapi Mall.

Or actually, "The Mall Bangkapi". The Mall is some conglomerate that owns a bunch of big shopping centers. It's about 1-2km as the crow flies, but in reality traffic makes it closer to a 20 minute journey.

Ella wanted to get hair scrunchie things, and there's a store that sells them really cheap there. I mostly stand around and look at weird stuff while she debates on getting a dark blue or navy blue band.

Then comes the cooking. We actually prepared a lot of ingredients, to be used over the next few days.

And finally, the result of our labor.

Actually, I missed out on a lot of stuff. I really suck at this blogging thing. Alright, New Years Resolution - when you say you're going to document a day, remember to take more than 5 photos.

Wish you could have had many more boring days, Grant.