Siam

In Wuhan, there are no super-clean metropolitan super-malls. Cathy had no idea what these sort of malls looked like. Well, it so happened that Bangkok has a string of well-known super malls around the Siam area.  If alone, it would not catch my radar signal on my solo travels.  But we needed baht and a well-known currency exchange called Super Rich was in the Siam area.  We pinged that area on our maps for the day.

Cathy at Siam Paragon

Typical Asian traffic

After getting more baht for cheap, we went to scope out the various shopping centers around the area.  One of them had things that really wowed Cathy.  For me it was pretty normal, which just shows how spoiled we North Americans are with our material culture.

But honestly, I had fun.  It's been too long since I've been to such a mall.  Okay, okay, I was in such places in Seoul.  But I have to admit, it was pretty interesting to see how hard candy was made in Central World.  And the Vietnamese food that we had for early dinner made my day...well actually, more like month.  No such food exists in Wuhan, that's for sure.

A hard candy maker

Early dinner at Central World. We had Vietnamese food.

My sassy girl.

My favorite part was by far walking into Toys R Us.  Cathy was so impressed with the toys in the store, she decided to buy some for her baby cousin (see my Jingzhou posts).  She kept on saying that it's so hard for families to find such quality toys for their infants in China.  That, unfortunately, is a sad reality for early childhood parenting in China.  Toys are bad quality and sometimes even dangerous (Cathy and I watched an expose on TV a while ago about how some kids toys for domestic consumption in China were being made out of uncleaned, untreated, used plastic). Couple that with parents being too busy, some being too uppity to actually raise their kids, and the one child policy, that creates one neglected population of kids. Good thing for grandma and grandpa, that's for sure!

Ironically, half the stuff in the store was made in China. Export quality products.

But I digress.  Back to Siam.  For me, I really liked looking at the board games since Wuhan is devoid of stores with board games.  I didn't buy any because I didn't want to lug game boxes around Thailand, but staring at them reminded me of my brother's vast collection of awesome games.  We used to play many rounds of various games back when my brother visited Vancouver.  Sometimes I sat out because I got bored of playing, but now I really miss those fun times.

Being in Toys R Us was a uncanny experience.  For a fleeting moment, I felt as if I was back at one in Metrotown in my native Burnaby.  Ah, the bittersweet taste of nostalgia....but whatever bitterness I had was soon replaced with sweetness once Cathy and I got some REAL ice cream!

This stuff was rare in Wuhan until just recently.

Siam by night. We left Bangkok shortly after.

We took the rapid transit train to the long distance bus station once the sky turned dark.  We then boarded the last bus heading northbound.  Cathy tried to get some shuteye, unimpressed with the uncomfortable seats and the blaring Thai pop concert on the TV screens.  However, I stayed up watching it.  I learned that Thongchai "Bird" McIntyre was a pretty powerful force in Thai pop culture.

Stopping at a rest stop, I got out to take a look around.  The stop was filled with people eating and buying snack food despite it being about 3 AM in the middle of nowhere.  I took to the snack food, even though I saw some foreigners repulsed by it.  It all looked both familiar and delicious to me.

Thai snack food has an uncanny resemblance to Filipino snacks

Heart clogging pork rinds. Delicious!

In the early morning, we arrived in what would end up being our current favorite place in Thailand  - Chiang Mai!