It was time for another massage. We had walked by this place called the Urban Retreat on previous trips to Bangkok. They have this four-handed upper and lower body massage that was pretty reasonably priced ($20 for one hour) for an upscale looking place that I had to try out. One person focuses on your head and shoulders while the other massages your feet and legs. Theresa got a massage called the Jetlag, which focused on the upper and lower back mixed with aromatherapy, exactly what she wanted.
In an effort to try as many restaurants at the Dusit
Thani as we could, we had lunch at their Vietnamese restaurant called Thien Duong. We started out with the Vietnamese version of a pu pu platter which consisted of beef wrapped in lotus leaves, pork balls, minced shrimp on sugar cane, and chicken spring rolls. We also shared the jasmine rice mixed seafood casserole and fried rice with pork, shrimp and lotus seeds in a lotus leaf. We were trying to have a light lunch to save room for the the hotel dinner buffet we planned to attack later in the evening.We then did some more lounging by the pool. It was a 90 degree day and the hotel was providing some nice shade (and free fruit skewers). Looked like Phuket and Ko Samoi still had a high chance of rain, so nice call on our part to stay put in Bangkok. We did take a dip in the pool to do some laps in the middle of all the laziness. At poolside, we read up on the rules of squash for our upcoming
match.We signed up for an hour of squash. When we first hit the ball, we thought something was wrong because the ball just died when it hit the ground. Turns out we were just weak. We eventually got the hang of it and had some good rallies. We played five games in all. It wasn't important who won all five games and played left-handed half the time, we had fun. Heh.
Having worked up an appetite, it was time for the dinner buffet, which has Maine lobsters on Friday nights. Needless to say, we stuffed ourselves quite well. Our combined tally was three lobster tails, six crabs, six giant shrimps (closer in size to lobsters than regular shrimps). In addition, we had sushi, pan fried foie gras, Australian tenderloin, lamb, and numerous rounds of dessert.
The hotel gave us two complimentary drink
tickets so we later went to the hotel bar, My Bar, to use them. We should have known they were for soft drinks / juices and not alcoholic drinks. We used up one ticket for a pineapple juice and bought a frozen margarita. It was a cool-looking bar, mainly blue lights, playing loud music which you could hear from most parts of the ground floor of the hotel. Too bad noone was there. After our drinks, we took a short walk around outside and then we called it a night. Day 47 - "Bye Bye Southeast Asia" - Bangkok, Thailand
Since it was our last day in Bangkok, I figured that I might as well get another haircut from my favorite place, even though its been less than two weeks since my last cut. Even though it was busy, I still got the same high class treatment. Theresa was a little jealous because when she got a haircut, she never got a massage whereas I got a massage from the person who washed my hair AND another one from the person cutting my hair. Because it takes more time to cut her hair, there's less time for massages. Theresa doesn't buy that excuse, she thinks they only massage the men.
Theresa really wanted to try the French restaurant called D'Sens, especially the tasting menu. We thought we had timed it perfectly, arriving at 1:45pm, thinking that lunch ends at 2pm. Unfortunately, when we got to the top floor, we found out it was not open for lunch on Saturdays. This really bummed Theresa out, not only because she really wanted to eat there, but because she was also starving...and you know when Theresa's hungry...watch out!
Instead, we went to the cafe for a smoked salmon sandwich. Wasn't quite satisfied. We then went to the lobby lounge to use our last drink ticket. There we saw that they were offering afternoon tea.
Bingo. A wide variety of little bites - including tuna tar tar with caviar, foie gras, lobster salad, and a variety of finger sandwiches and desserts. It was time for our last taxi ride in Bangkok. Would they try to scam us one last time? Of course. Leaving the Dusit Thani, we get into the taxi and he says 400 bahts off meter. We say meter, then counter offer with 300 no meter. We figured he would take it since he could probably pocket it all for himself. He said no, no, 350. We refused and he said "I do drive all the time, same as meter." Well, if it's the same as meter, what's our incentive to do off-meter? Duh! So we said to just do meter. Also, tolls were 70. We gave him 100 and he failed to give us our change back. At this point, we were annoyed with this guy. At the end, the meter ended up being 230, we kindly reminded him of the 30 he already pocketed. Ended up being 320 bahts including a small tip which was still better than his 350 counteroffer!
We spent our last 100 baht at the airport on drinks. Unfortunately, they changed their policy and you can't bring liquids bought within the terminal on the plane either. So we had to guzzle it before hopping on for our flight to Australia. Next stop, Sydney!
For pictures of days 46 and 47, go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=bigtandeze&target=ALBUM&id=5401684110501469073&authkey=Gv1sRgCNXtr8uK2KmbnAE&feat=email
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