thai kind of day

So today, I went uber-traditional, uber-touristy, and uber-Thai for the day - why not, I only have a couple left. I took a morning Thai cookery class, and had a Thai massage.

Unexpectedly, considering I generally love to cook and am not so keen on massaged, I was a much bigger fan of the latter than the former. Who would have guessed?

The cooking class was great, don't get me wrong. It's just that a couple of years back, I took a Thai cooking class with my father and sister that was awesome, and I didn't feel like this one blew me away any more than that. Any excuse to eat, though. I do wonder if my opinion would have been different if we did a different dessert - namely, mango and sticky rice. I want to know how they get that rice so sticky! Instead we did bananas poached in coconut milk. Tasty, absolutely. But the how to is...kind of right there in the name, you know?

The massage was better. Not just for the hour of aircon splendor in the middle of the day, but beause it was a lot more stretching and working of kinks than a massage I am used to - I felt more like I was being stretched out by a trainer at a gym than getting a massage, and I mean that in a good way.

Other day highlights (it was a full one!): My last wat, Wat Arun, a Khymer-style temple that you can climb up. It was late in the day, thank God, but the hard part was the steepness of the steps - I had to pull myself up by the hands, honestly. I didn't die, though!

Because I've been in Bangkok so long, I am checking off anything from any guidebook highlights section that sounds remotely interesting. One of them is fascinated by upscale hotels, so a friend and I went to check one out today. This place was so stuck up its own bum that it won't admit backpackers to come in, and has a stricter dress code than the grand Palace, one of the most sacred sites in Bangkok. I wouldn't stay in that hotel for anything, honestly - those places, like flan, are really only good if you are fancy on the inside, and I am not. I took a picture, crossed if off my checklist, and went on my merry way.

(On a side note, there is a side of Bangkok that is like that - forget the income of 98% of the country, we are rich and we will flaunt it; it's called Siam Square, it tires to be as European or American as possible, and it is distressingly juxtaposed with the entire rest of the country. There is more to it than that, sure, but this country has nearly as much in the way of five star luxury resorts as it has in poverty, and that's just bizarre. I got way off track here. All of that wasn't today, it was just where my mind went).

I am still ready to leave, but at least I will have seen more when I do.