Morning brings me bright eyed and bushy tailed...another night of blissful sleep-Sweet!...it also brings us the last 3 of the group, Ted, Jilbert, and Steve. This is the first time I'm meeting these guys but they're friends with Helen, Mo, and Eric. Sometime after breakfast someone, I'm not sure ex
actly who came up with the idea, decided we should check out a longboating tour. I was game, as everyone else was. So we congregated in the T.A.T. and set up our little tour. About 20 min later we headed on our way to the pier to board the boat for a 2 hour tour of the canals of Bangkok. I thoroughly enjoyed the ride, for we one took a route that there weren't 10 thousand other boats sightseeing, and there wasn't a guide blasting 'to your left is blah, blah, and if you look to the right is xxx'. I really dislike those kind of tours. It was one of those things that you got to see life lived. Kids batheing in the river, clothes on clothes lines drying, what we thought were birthday parties, but come to find out a little later they were just getting ready
for New Year's parties, house boats, and even a women selling produce from a boat. Steve decided that he wanted to flag down this boat and purchase some fruit. He ended up getting some oranges and tamarind. I've had sauces made of tamarind but I've never actually had the root by itself. Delish. It kind of reminded me of a tart gummy candy. 
The oranges were phenom also, not your average FL or CA variety, sweeter close to a manderin or tangerine. We finished up on the water and were going to head the the Golden Palace. I guess in the package we booked we had our own personal guide, pretty cool. Problem with heading straight to the Palace was, there's a strict dress code to enter and not everyone was dressed in proper attire. So we had to make quick pit stop back at the hotel so anyone that needed to change could change. Steve and Jilbert decided to drop out so they could souviner shop, the rest of us forged on. Ah the wonderous Golden Palace aka Disney theme park or any overly crowded tourist trap. Don't get me wrong it was definatley a beautiful sight with the ornate details constructed on the buildings as well as the illustrious Emerald Buddha, but personally I could have done without it. Not for nothing once you see one wat you've pretty much seen them all. After we left "watmania" we strolled down to a ferry that took us to yet another wat. On the way we made sure to grab a coconut, chopped open to drink some coconut milk and some fabulous little pancake looking things the size of a dollar coin. Oh course we had to keep an eye on Steve since he was on a spree to stop at all the little vendors and pick up the most random food items. At some point I think he must of had a dozen different things. I tried a few, one of them being a mangosten. I've never heard of such a fruit but it was one of the best tasting things I'd had by far. I can't remember what the other was, maybe because it wasn't good. After a joyous day of temple scaling and monk spotting, we tuk-tuked it back to the hotel to get ready for the NYE 07 extravaganza.
By the time we got back, it was getting pretty late. We still needed to shower and get gussied up, and I really was in need of a nap. It had been a long day-between the sun and walking to & fro, I didn't have too much juice left. Alas there wasn't enough time to get in the seista, making me quite cranky to say the least. We decided that we'd all meet in the lobby at 7p, so we could get dinner before partying it up. Now you'd think that the 3 girls would be the one's running late, we have so much more to do to get ready. Oh no we were ready long before the boys. So that said we did not leave @ 7 like we planned. From this point on in my book things began to get on the chaotic side (Note:this is my point view and experience...others may not have felt this way) We found out that we wouldn't be able to take a cab to the place we were going since the many of the roads were shut down...we were informed that we'd have to take a cab to the skytrain(subway) to our final destination. No problem. Because there were 7 of us we had to take 2 cabs, again no problem. Cab #1 contained myself, Helen, Eric, and Jilbert. Cab #2 contained Mo, Ted and Steve. Problem #1 we lost cab 2 somewhere in the mix. We got out waited and looked around for where the cab may be. No sign of them anywhere. Problem #2 Mo and I decided that we'd just take 1 purse between the two of us...she had the purse with all my money. Issue #3 we didn't have a exact place where we were going, just a vacinity. Oh and none of us had phones except Mo who had her "crackberry" so we could contact another friend that was supposed to meet up with us later. With no way to contact one another, and no sign of one another, my group decided to forge on to the skytrain to the final stop...praying that we'd happen to bump in to the rest of the group somewhere in the midst of everything. Walking around eyes open searching, we bumped into a baby elephant being paraded down the street. It was so cute, but quite disturbing to see this poor animal being put on show in the middle of the city. While trying to figure out how we were going to reunite, it all of the sudden hit me, duh, Mo has the "crackberry", we just need to email her and tell her where we are. Now we have to find an internet place...how fitting as I say it, in front of us is an internet cafe...PERFECT! We get in touch and reunite with group#2. Yay! Now we've wasted a good amount of time in this moment of insanity, I'm starving which makes my crankiness escalate. We find a place to eat dinner. Things at this point downspiral for me. Now the boys have been drinking for some time now, making them a bit rowdy. At the restaurant a few of them begin to be in my mind rude and obnoxious, since I was sober and not ready to start drinking I think that this made it a little untolerable for me. Also I have huge pet peeves when it comes to unruly behavior in service place being that's the field I work in. Almost ready to call it a night because I was honestly just pissy, Mo and Helen talked me down from the ledge and I decided to not celebrate the evening at the hotel.
On to Bed Supper Club to ring in the New Year. This was discussed that we'd 99% be going here, which is an upscale nightclub. More problems arise. Jilbert forgot to bring an ID, something that he could have, with a bit of cash, remedied. And Ted was wearing flip flops, something that I pointed out before we left, but he didn't pay attention to me, money was not going to solve this one. Oh boy! I wasn't in any mood to deal with this. Helen assured me that that was their problem and we going in with or with out them. Jilbert managed to get in and Ted apparently found some random person and traded shoes with them...I wasn't asking questions. Inside was perfect except, alas more issues..my issues, the place was enrobbed in smoke. I started to have a hard time breathing and again wanted to leave. I stepped outside and and tried to get some fresh air. I managed to sort of get passed my bad mood and stay to sip champagne into 2008. I did have a few more downs of the night but honestly I'm done harking on them because it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to spend NYE in an exotic local and I did have fun once I let things go.
HAPPY 2008!!!!
*Apologizes go to my friends Helen, Eric, Mo, Ted, Jilbert, and Steve for my unpleasant mood this night. I'm so sorry guys!*
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