A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Bangkok, Thailand

In the end, I only spent one night in Bangkok this time. First of all, I was unable to get into the Atlanta (great weird place I'll write about later), then my second choice, the D & D (soulless hotel but with beautiful rooftop pool) was full up as well. So rather than brave Khao San Road to find a cheap place, I went to a clean little guesthouse (with aircon -- my concession to sanity preservation in Bangkok) near Siam Square.

Siam Square looked a lot nicer from teh window of the Sky Train than it did on the ground. Lots of urban malls and teenagers, and it was all kind of grimy. Since my only real objective was to watch movies in airconditioned comfort for the day, the quality of Siam Square didn't really bother me.

Unfortunately, I waited a bit too long for Movie Day. Instead of the Mindless Hollywood Blockbuster CGI-Fests that I wanted to see (Matrix Reloaded, X-Men 2) I was forced to settle for a lesser pair of Mindless Hollywood Blockbuster CGI-Fests: The Hulk and Charlie's Angels Full Throttle. Here are my reviews:

The Hulk: **1/2
Boring and utterly humorless apart from the laughably fakey monsters. Nice retro split-screen/wipe techniques, but they should have but some of that graphics money into a decent writer.

Charlie's Angels Full Throttle: *1/2
Stupid, but what can you expect? I suspect I would have enjoyed it more if I were either male or gay, as the principal objective of the film appeared to be to get the Angels into skanky outfits.

Bangkok Theater: ****
Wow! Assigned seating, wide plush chairs, carpeted floors, big screens, friendly ushers with flashlights, and staff who speak English. For an extra dollar or two you can even upgrade to the Super Gold Club seating, which appeared to consist of oversized padded leather lazy-boys with extending footrests and full reclining. Next time I can't find a hotel I'm just going to join the Super Gold Club and go to consecutive movies through the night.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 6:27 AM