Where's the countdown?
We waited with baited breath for the countdown to begin. As seen on TV, in the UK during the countdown, there’s an enormous roar of people counting down, you can’t miss it. But we didn’t hear or see any sort of countdown; all we could hear was the clapping of the fireworks. Out of nowhere the fireworks came out in force, all we could do was watch them in the reflection of tall buildings. One minute we were talking about how close it is to midnight, the next it’s New Year’s Day in Bangkok!
So, the new year was a bit of a flop, and after 15 minutes or so, there was a huge mosh pit of people trying to get out and go home. We were dipping and diving in and out of barriers, breathing in, lightly pushing past people. Mat and I were done for the night, so we ended up leaving Jack and Wayne together (good luck to Jack). It was reminiscent of a post football match walk home, thousands of people all walking in the same direction to get home. Of course, the further away from the centre of the celebrations, the quieter it became. By the time we reached the hostel, the crowds were back to normal.
For our first experience of being amongst a horde of people, check Golden Week in China!
Nothing to do
We both had a long lie in today. Despite having come back to the hostel quite early on in the morning, Mat was wiped out until gone 12pm. When we finally graced Bangkok on this fine New Year’s Day, we began with a toastie breakfast from 7/11 across the road. Pretty basic, but better than toast we’ve had, plus it’s cheap and tasty. After we’d finished demolishing that, we got a taxi outside the hostel and decided to visit a snake farm today. As it was New Year’s Day, there wasn’t much open, activity wise, in Bangkok. It turns out, this extends to the snake farm, when we got there, it was closed too. We sat outside of the walls of the building, looking for something to do. I know it was New Year’s Day, but I was sure there would be stuff to do in Bangkok.
After searching for things to do for an hour or so, we settled on the Siam Paragon shopping centre. This was a few minutes away from Central World, and was no less impressive. There was a cinema up top, so we looked at the films and decided to watch Star Wars. The next showing was in a few hours, so we had time to kill. We had a good look around many of the shops, as is custom when we find a shopping centre. As both of our careers revolved around IT, we were attracted to an electronics store. It sold pretty much everything electronic, but we spent a good amount of time looking at computers and laptops. This was also because I was thinking of getting a laptop when I return to the UK. I wanted to be able to travel with one.
Wasting time
After spending ages in the technology shop, we decided to descend to the food hall, which was below ground level. It was humungous and had everything you could ever want to eat…and more! It was packed, and very difficult to decide what to have to eat. We settled on a nicely set out restaurant and had some delicious noodles and chicken, but seasoned. It was rather beautiful to be honest. We didn’t stay for dessert though; the choices weren’t so great.
As time passed, we ascended to the top floor which hosted the cinema. We watched Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker at around half 5 and I have to say I did enjoy it. Mat’s not in to Star Wars much, so after the film I was needed to fill in all of the gaps for him, which I was able to do with ease. Well, I have been into Star Wars my whole life pretty much haha. On the return journey to the hostel, we picked up a McFlurry on the way which always goes down a treat. We then turned in for the night, getting ready to move on from Bangkok tomorrow.
