Our first proper day in Bangkok and of our amazing trip, we decided to make the most of it... and get up at a spritely 11am. Given the jetlag and time difference, this was actually quite good. 

In order to ease our way into the time zone and Bangkok, we decided to go explore a few of the malls and the main shopping street Sukhumvit. We thought this was something that, if we needed to call it a day early, we wouldn't be annoyed about missing part of.

By the time we got ready and left, it was close to lunchtime, so got a taxi (no Uber here, but they do have Grabtaxi, which is like Uber, just really awful). We got in and headed to Terminal 21, a mall designed like an airport and each floor is designed after a different city. This appeared in a few blogs we read because of the unusual design (we only captured Japan), but also because the toilets were hella fancy. We obvious didn’t take any pictures of them…that we’re sharing here. Whilst there were quite a few interesting looking shops, we went straight down to the food court. It was lunchtime after all.  

We hit up a ramen stall, given they looked one of the nicest and had a decent place to rest our weary feet from all that taxi drivering. If the rest of the food on the trip is like what we've had so far, we are in luck. Brilliant ramen, but the real stars of the show were the gyozas and little miscellaneous balls I had alongside it.

We thought we’d head up towards the middle of the shopping road, covering quite a few malls and a good walking distance, about an hour each way. The walk was really interesting, getting a feel for the real Bangkok up the side streets.

We looked at the greying clouds, and our tired souls, and determined this was the best time to stop for a little iced coffee. It was here we made our first local friend; his name was Sir Reginald L. Vermouth and he was a tiny gecko that climbed onto Hannah.

The walk continued up and we realised just how many bikes there are in Bangkok, there are a few.

The next one we came to was the Central Embassy, which can only be described as God Damn Fancy. Very much reminded me of Harrods, or any of the other really fancy places I've been to and tried not to speak in so they don't hear my accent and throw me out. 

In the middle of this upmarket shopping district is the Erwan Shrine, which was built to remove the bad juju from laying the foundations of the nearby Erwan hotel on the wrong date. Totally legit.

After about the second mall I think we were both shopped out, without buying anything. However, I found a great dessert place called CODE in one mall further up, so off we toddled to try and find it. Turns out that mall was one of the biggest and we we're having real trouble even finding where we were, let alone where this place was. What we did stumble upon was an award ceremony type deal for, what I assume is, cake decoration, based on the cakes that were on show.

We then managed to find CODE and after the time and effort expended trying to find it, I was a little nervous it wasn't going to live up to scratch. However, turns out my pick in desserts parlours is as spot on as my ability to accidentally light bins on fire. Hannah ordered a Lemon iced tea and lemon meringue slice whilst I had a Caramel Frappe and the Nutella lava toast. I think we can all agree that 1 - they were great looking desserts and 2 - I definitely picked the best.

From here, we decided to head about down towards Terminal 21 to see another part of Bangkok you must tick off the list, the red-light district, Soi Cowboy. On the way though, we stumbled on a great little gem. A sort of "container park" with loads of little food places and live music.

We stopped here for some Mango sticky rice and a beer and watched the music. it must be easy singing western songs in a country with limited understanding of English, you can just make the words up.

In Soi Cowboy, it was a surprisingly short little alley just off the main street, probably 12 bars long at most. Filled with people clearly who were tourists (a few clearly 'regulars') and women stood outside trying to get people in, we decided that this wasn't for us and proceeded to get a taxi home... after 6-7 drinks.

Arriving back to the hostel, is was now time for some dinner, so back to the street food road for us and a new vendor. This time pork noodle broth from closer to the river. We learned our lesson from the first night and didn't put as much chilli in the broth (or at least some of us did). Again, really good food for about £2, easy to see why poor students come here for travelling (although why everyone says they come back having lost weight I'll never know).