The Hunt Begins

Our flight touched down in Bangkok at around 10:50 last night, roughly twenty minutes ahead of schedule. By the time we cleared customs and made our way to our hotel, it was well past midnight and we both pretty much collapsed into bed and hope to sleep through until mid-morning. Unfortunately, despite the fatigue, our circadian rhythms had other plans for us and we had a fairly fitful nights rest with both of us awakening before 7:00.

We had hoped to go for the fruit buffet at the Baiyoke Hotel, which we visited and quite enjoyed a couple of years ago, but they were all booked up today. Brenda had seen adds for a durian festival happening at the huge Central World mall, so we opted to go there instead. For 459฿ each (about $18.00 Cdn)we were offered all-you-can-eat-in-an-hour durian, mangosteen, rambutan, mango, langsat, sapodilla and young coconut. Because there were so many people at our 1:00 sitting, the organizers extended our time allotment to 90 minutes! Despite our best efforts, after seventy minutes of gorging ourselves, we had to call "no mas" and throw in the towel.

We then explored the farmers market that was next to the event, where something we've never seen before occurred. We turned down almost all the store d'oeuvres we were offered!!! There was simply no more room left in our fruit filled bellies. We did, however see some of the largest and most beautiful mangoes ever. The Mahachanok variety was so vibrantly colored it looked like artificial fruit. The Red Mangoes were bigger than my hand.

Now, nearly two hours later, I'm still stuffed, Brenda is sleeping off her gluttony and I believe I'll be burping durian until tomorrow morning.

Today is Brenda's birthday and I had planned on going out for a nice dinner with her. But the way things are looking now, maybe we'll just go down to the hotel bar and have a glass of bubbly.

The best laid plans of mice and men.....Læs mere