Thailand Day 1: Bang! Bang!

Back when Mike had initially agreed to fly to Thailand with me, I asked him if there was anything in particular he wanted to do. One of his answers was to go to a shooting range, so I found one on a military base right in Bangkok. After re-thinking the idea, Mike had apparently changed his mind--in fact, he didn't even remember offering up the idea--but the appointment was already made, and somebody was scheduled to pick us up from our hostel at 1 pm, so there was no backing out now. And to be completely honest, I was actually excited about the idea--just to see how it felt to pull the trigger.

That wasn't until 1 in the afternoon, though, so we had some time to kill after breakfast. We walked around in the general direction of Chinatown.

This pretty little roundabout marks the beginning of Chinatown.

 There was also the Golden Buddha temple right across the street, with a huge crowd of people inside, so we thought we'd check it out.

This is the only picture of me you'll see in Thailand, so bask in my glory.

That elephant looks FIERCE1

Upon leaving the temple, we were going to make our way to a few other landmarks when we came across this friendly gentleman who offered to help as soon as he saw us looking at our map. We told him where we were going, and he suggested that we stay away from that area, since there were some recent upheavals and major protests near the government buildings. A police officer was killed some time the previous week. Instead, he put us on tuk tuk and instructed the driver to take us to the Tourism Authority of Thailand office nearby.

Once there, we ended up booking a package tour that would take us to a floating market and a few other places on Sunday.

With that in place, we made our way back to the hostel to wait for our ride to the military base. As I mentioned earlier, the hostel was a bitch to find, so we ended up waiting a while in the lobby. Our ride eventually showed up and took us to the base. Along the way, we asked about prices, and they proved to be more expensive than what I had read online. Fortunately, there was a package that Mike and I were allowed to share in order to split the cost. We ended up getting 25 shots on a .9 mm, a .45 mm, and a .22 mm rifle.

It proved to be very challenging for several reasons. It wasn't like I remembered on Goldeneye for N64. First, I am physically incapable of closing my left eye for some bizarre reason. (Though I assure you I can turn left.) That meant I had to aim with my right eye, which is apparently not proper technique. Secondly, the kickback on the handguns is pretty intense.

I'm definitely glad I had the experience, just to know what the sensation feels like, but I think it's safe to say that I will never feel inclined to fire off another weapon for the rest of my life. The power of it all was overwhelming, like I was holding the world in my hands. (Although I desperately wanted to use the sideways gangster shooting technique, but I was pretty sure the dude watching me would have broken my arm or something.)

With my violent urges taken care of, we headed to the major mall area. It turns out Bangkok has several major shopping malls all clustered together. We're talking Yorkdale-scale malls. If I closed my eyes walking through Siam, I could've sworn I was back home in Toronto. All of these places were huge, and obviously targeted tourists.

Outside of Siam Shopping Centre

Outside of MBK. This mall is six floors of top-to-bottom knock off merchandise that you can buy at insanely cheap prices. 

Not sure what the fascination was with these penguin-type creatures outside of the major malls. 

These penguins obviously committed some heinous crimes, as they were apparently hung as punishment for their actions. They also served as a reminder to other penguins. They know what they did.

Yet another crowded shopping area in Bangkok.

With the sun going down, we decided it was time to quench our thirsts with a nice cold beer. I'd read about a great bar called Brown Sugar that regularly featured live music, so we made the long trek from Siam to partake in our first night of Thai night life.

Along the way, we came across this celebration of the Holiday Season outside of Central World Plaza, which is where the city holds their New Year countdown. It was just a bunch of big shiny Christmas decorations, but I love me some shiny Christmas decorations. Mike was being a little Grinch, but I took his phone anyway and start snapping some pictures.

CHRISTMAS TREEEEEE!

Once I was content that I'd seen everything, we continued on our way to Brown Sugar. The walk from Siam took a total of about an hour. Our map, as we would find out as the week went on, was terribly unreliable. Locations were often off-mark or very hard to locate exactly. We had the latter problem with Brown Sugar. We were in the general area, but we had no idea where it was. I finally asked some people on the street, and one of the guys told us that the place had closed down. This wouldn't be the last time that I would curse our map.

With that, we just went back to Siam and had a couple beers in a little plaza outside the mall. The entire setup had been put together in the time that we had left the Siam area. It was an interesting setup, because the tables and seats were crammed together so tightly that despite being out in the open, it actually felt rather quaint. The random 90's hits straight out of Big Shiny Tunes was just a perfect hilarious touch.

And that, folks, was our first full day in Thailand.