Our Outing to Lumpini Park on Sunday, 30 January 2012

Eager to find some serenity in the craziness that is Bangkok, we jumped on the bus and BTS en route to Lumpini Park, a large green space in the more-or-less center of town.  It's not much to behold when up close - there's collection of well worn, old school gym equipment, a walking path that circumnavigates the park, groups of dilapidated benches when you need to take a break from your walking, and...monitor lizards.  This shot from dailytravelphoos.com show one of the creatures in Lumpini Park and a pedal boat like the one we were using in the background:

These big reptiles were the most interesting feature of Lumpini.  While we were making our way around the small lake in our pedal boat, numerous lizards made their way to the lake front to feed and then take a swim.  They weren't menacing at all as they didn't appear to be the least bit interested in all the humans snapping photos of them.

An hour or so was enough at Lumpini so we headed home in search of a meal.  We hit the jackpot as we decided to try the open-air restaurant down the street from our hotel.  We'd passed it several times and were a bit put off by it's distinctly "local" nature and the possibility that there would be no English on the menu.  We needn't have worried.  The staff were very friendly, the menu had English, the food was dirt cheap, and the meals were incredibly tasty.  We're not exactly sure what anything costs because at the end of the meal you're just presented with a number on a slip of note paper.  Divide it by 30 (30 Thai Baht is worth about 1 Canadian dollar) and that's the cost of the meal.  The mystery does lend itself nicely to the "how much will it be game" we also like to play while visiting the North Vancouver Transfer Station with load of rubbish.  Tonight's meal was a shockingly low 430 THB.  Needless to say, we were all high with our guesses.

- LH