Christmas Day 2012!!! It starts just like any other Christmas Day, I jump out of bed and run out of my hotel room in to the lobby to see if santa has been good to me! Unfortunately this year santa must not have know I was travelling, because there is nothing here for me.
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After this dream I pull myself out of bed to find that I have many messages from Miao as she arrived at 6am. Not really sure why she thought that it would be a good idea to message me at that time, I mean it is not as if I would have been up. Crazy Chinese! So I agree to meet her near the Starbucks, of course who knows what she was doing, because it takes her a small eternity to get there, but I just enjoy my Christmas Day. When Miao arrives she wishes me a Merry Christmas and we get a coffee and discuss what we will do today. She is keen to get some silver boxes for some small clay sculptors of Buddha that she has bought. She has so many, she is bringing them home for all her friends. So she needs to buy some silver display cases for them. They are worn round your neck on a chain, after she shows me what they are I then start to notice them everywhere that I go.
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So we head back to the market I was at yesterday because I am sure that I saw some of these things. It's not far and so we start trawling through the stalls. Miao looks like she knows what she is after. She can see the difference between real silver and fake silver at 50 paces. Quite the skill, of course it all looks the same to me. I am just as amazed at the selection available in this market as I was yesterday, that and just how big it is, it appears to go on and on forever. Having not had what Miao was looking for we stop at one of the many food places and order up some spicy soup, before heading down one of the streets that runs along side one of the temples. This also has market stalls lining the street but has conventional shops to the side as well. These appear to have more of the real silver boxes that Miao is after. They aren't cheap at about £50 a box for some of the real silver ones. After some deliberation she opts for slightly cheaper ones and buys about 8, easily spending about £100. She has a circular one that she bought herself, this one proves to be difficult to buy a case for, because of it's shape and size. That and the fact that Miao would have to be a little picky about the style of case, being a girl. She eventually compromises and get a case.
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After we get this shopping out of the way, we head back to where our hotels are and I check online to see if I can find somewhere that will be doing Christmas dinner for tonight. Yes, I know I have left it pretty late for such things, but I thought that it would be no problem. I start to get worried when I head down Ko Shan road and find that none of the pubs are doing a special Christmas menu. So I scour the internet trying to find some up to date information about where to get the turkey! I find a couple of options and I have a general area where I think we will have the best chance of a Christmas dinner. So I get my Christmas hat on and off we go, flag down a taxi and jump in. Now, online it suggests that the taxi might be about 120bht and take about 30mins. The reality was however, that the traffic was so bad and congested that we were in the taxi for well over an hour. I nearly faded away. Couple this with the fact that the taxi driver got lost and spoke no English and we had a recipe for complete and utter failure. I am starting to get concerned that the dream Christmas dinner might be off the cards. We get dropped off at the street where the pub is supposed to be, The Londoner. After walking up and down the street and having no joy I have accepted that Christmas dinner is off the cards for this year, I'll probably be having noodles. I'll be honest, this realisation is fairly soul destroying, but we are both hungry so it's time to find somewhere to eat. As we are leaving the street Miao points up to a sign for The Londoner, and there it is, down some steps. She jumps up and down with excitement because she knows how happy I am. I'm not getting too excited yet, I have no reservation and there are a lot of people outside. We walk in and there are plenty of tables, we are asked if we have a reservation, we don't, but no problem, we are shown to a table.
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It's when I sit down that I realise that we've made it. I am going to get a Christmas dinner, on Christmas day. I'm pretty happy and I haven't even seen the menu. It is a set course, with 5 courses and coffee after. It's not cheap at about £30, but it's Christmas so I don't care. The 5 courses were amazing, I think the best Christmas dinner I have had outside, obviously it doesn't compare to mum's, but then it was never going to! Cauliflower soup followed by smoked salmon, then a palate cleansing passion fruit sherbet, served in a bowl made of ice. Then on to the main, turkey, roasties, some veg, pigs in blankets and gravy! Finished off with Christmas pudding and mince pies, with a cup of coffee. The setting is an open plan pub, with live music and a good atmosphere. Miao has never had a traditional Christmas dinner, and so it was nice to show her a bit of my culture. She throughly enjoyed it, particularly the bread sauce, which was odd! I rocked my Santa hat for the whole meal, only person in the place with a Santa hat. It was 90% westerners, they should be ashamed of themselves!
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After dinner we decide to walk a bit before getting back in a taxi. Being so stuffed this should help walk off the dinner. This part of Bangkok is the expensive part, there are skyscrapers and luxury shopping malls. There is also the sky train, which is a train network that runs overhead. Very different from my touristy Ko Shan. After a little walking we flag down a taxi to take us back. There is a technique to this. All the taxis are brightly coloured, each one representing a different company, so we have pink, blue, yellow, orange, green, red and a green and yellow one. These are the ones to be avoided because they are private taxis. So taxis try to charge you a flat rate for the distance, when you enquire about the meter, you are informed that it is asleep. Very clever! As long as you are persistent you will get one who will use the meter, though sometimes you have to turn away 5/6. If you don't use the meter you get charged twice the price, and as for the tuk tuks, to be avoided at all costs!
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We head out for a few drinks as it is Christmas, just off Ko Shan road, on the street a wee place that isn't too noisy for a few beers. We end up messing around with Miao's camera, taking long exposure shots which kept us highly entertained. Head to bed about 2am. Not my usual Christmas Day, but a throughly enjoyable one none the less.