5th Trip to Bangkok

Well, the title speak for itself. Recently I just came back from Bangkok aka my annual shopping trip despite the recent riot and protest happening in Bangkok. Before my flight, my friends, my cousins, and my parents were nagging me about me going to Bangkok as the news had just shown a few death in the recent protest. So I check up with a friend of mine who know someone in the Thai Tourism Board about the condition in Bangkok. Apparently shopping areas are hardly affected by the riot. Only the government house areas are affected. So we decided to brave out this journey despite the numerous warning from friends and relatives ;P A day before my flight is due, we got an sms from Air Asia saying that the flight is gonna be delayed but my friend somehow mis-heard the information and told me that it was cancelled. For awhile there's a tiny bit of disappointment in me cos I so wanted to go Bangkok and so I called up another gf of mine to get the whole picture of the story. Apparently it was a false alarm, the flight was in fact delayed not cancelled. Phew.... We took the last flight to Bangkok and since it was delayed, our touch down time was delayed too. I reach Bangkok about 1 am M'sia time and 12 am Bangkok time. It was a tiring trip for me maybe cos my biological clock was telling me it's my bedtime as it is 1 am M'sia time. By the time we reach the hotel, it's already about 3 am in the morning and we are all drop dead tired and totally knock out. I don't even bother to have a close look at my hotel room. The hotel we stayed in is a themed hotel, every room has got different theme. Mine was one of the Japanese wave themed. Overall the hotel room is not bad as it cost us only RM 130, it's only meant for us to sleep in and bath in cos most of the time we will be out shopping or sightseeing.

Day One : We woke up early so we can have plenty of time to shop as we are going to Cha Tu Chak the weekend market. The hotel provided us with breakfast thus everyone stuff themselves full with a heavy breakfast so we have enough energy to walk in the weekend market. It is a hot and sunny day and by the time we meet up for lunch or tea we are all burn and sweaty and of course happy with our shopping. That is only the 1st half of our shopping itinery! 2nd half is to the famous MBK shopping complex to continue our shopping! Reason we choose MBK is because we wanna be in a shopping complex with air cond as all of us are all sweaty and smelly haha. Once we are in MBK, the first place we head to is Swensen :) Surprisingly Swensen in Thai is darn cheap. Me and Steve had a chocolate fondue with ice cream for RM 14.90 only. After Swensen, everyone is recharged and continue our mission to shop :) Last stop before heading back to hotel to refresh is Burger King for a pork burger. In Thai, it's all about pork burgers haha For dinner, our friend aka the half Thai boy hehe brought us to Chinatown for a very cheap and delicious seafood dinner. We had raw oysters, fish, prawn, vege, crab, mussels, fried rice and tom yum seafood soup and drinks for only about RM 282 plus. Darn cheap. Average per person is about RM 47. Cheap right??? Sorry ah no photo for this dinner as everyone is too hungry to remember about photo. Once the food arrived we just dig in and within 5 minutes the food is gone so I have only the mess we left behind after our delicious meal hehe :p

Day Two : Second day for shopping would be the whole sale area aka Pratunam. By this day, my little thigh are swollen and my feet is very painful. Still, we continue our mission :) The guys, well only Steve and Scott, went to the food court to have their beer session while waiting for us to shop. I guess they are tired of waiting for us ladies the shopaholics hehe. We were in Platinum Mall and I find things here are consider expensive compared last year when I went there. I could not get much in Platinum thus I bring Junie to another area, which I always go during my past years of shopping in Bangkok. I guess prices drop once u go out from the shopping complex. I can get 3 short pants for RM 10 outside of the shopping mall and mind you, it's quite nice design. Junie is satisfied with the shorts. We even bought some dresses for RM 10 per piece. Although the material is not really that good but I think for RM 10 it's worth it. By the time we went back to the food court to meet up the boys they are already going on their 7th bottles of beer. Beer in Bangkok are cheap doesn't matter it's imported or not. Later that night we went to Suan Lum Bazaar for dinner and shopping again. We had a 3 litre beer tower of Paulaner for only RM 90 which I consider darn cheap compared in KL. Well, can't compare actually cos there's not much Paulaner in KL.

Day Three : By this day, everyone is almost broke from shopping. Yes, that's how surprising it is. Lucky this day it's a sightseeing day so I guess not much money will be spent except for entrance fees, food and transportations. We had a laid back morning before going to the Grand Palace. Sadly we can't go in when we reach there as they have some festival/praying session going on inside thus the staff advised us to go other places before coming back by lunch time. 6 of us grab 2 tuk tuk and off we go to another temple which apparently only open once a year and we were lucky cos that day it is open door day. For some of them, taking the tuk tuk is a once in a lifetime experience. Why? Cos the tuk tuk that we took are kinda racing on the heavy traffic roads. Yes, the driver to my tuk tuk is like driving the F1 only it's on the main roads of Bangkok. All of us are saying NO to tuk tuk now hehe. To go into Grand Palace, one have to dress decently ie the skirt or pants must be longer then knee length and the top have to have sleeve or cover your shoulder or else you will be force to rent their pareo before they allowed you to enter the Grand Palace. As this is my 2nd time to the Grand Palace, we are all well aware of this and everyone dress up accordingly before going to Grand Palace. After the Grand Palace we went back to the hotel to bath and change our clothes before going to another place. In the evening we went to Erawan Shrine for praying purposes. Later on our friend brought us to a nice place for dinner again. It's by the Chao Praya River side. This time we managed to snap photos of our food before it is gobbled up by us hehe. After dinner we went for a drinking session in Khao San Road. This is an interesting place full of mat sallehs and the things that they sell here are mostly hand made and only in limited quantity. Too bad I was very tired out that night plus it is raining thus I don't have much mood to continue shopping. I head back to the hotel once I finished my drink to pack my luggage.

Day Four : Last day in Bangkok, it's a free and easy day. The 2 shopping king and queen continued their mission and the rest of us went sightseeing. This time we went to Wat Pho which is one of the largest temple in Thai and also with a huge reclining Buddha statue in it. It is a very large compound inside this temple. After Wat Pho we went to a temple nearby our hotel before going off for our last lunch in Bangkok as we are going back to KL in the evening flight. Me and Steve managed to find a little restaurant/pub/bistro nearby our hotel for our lunch. It is actually in Patpong area. It serve good Thai food at affordable prices. Yes, it's authentic Thai food. We stuffed ourselves full before heading back to hotel to freshen up before going to the airport. Guess what, this trip I am not the shopping queen. All my friends thought it is gonna be ME but surprise surprise, it is NOT me. Overall it is a fun filled trip for everyone. We had a great time in Bangkok shopping and I'm sure everyone would love to go there once more hehehe :) Next year perhaps ?

Mama Mia

Over the Raya holiday, I went for Mama Mia the movie in Pavilion. It's a sort of musical movie inspired by Abba songs. I'm not sure about the guys but to me (I think most of the girls) would like this movie. It's about a girl getting married and she wanted her father to give her hand away in her wedding. She found her mom's old diary and know that there's 3 possible guys who could be her father. So she invited 3 guys without her mom's knowledge to her wedding. It was a very cheerful movie and mind you, you most probably will be bound to sing along with the movie. All the songs are Abba's gold hits and I'm sure most of us are familiar with their songs. If u don't no worries cos subtitles of the songs are provided. In my case, I grow up listening to a lot of oldies like Abba. While watching the movie, I'm so tempted to sing along but knowing that my singing is gonnna disturb my fellow neighbors I decided not to sing out loud or sing along. But the girl next to me doesn't seem to agree with me. She's went on and sing along with the movie. Not that it's a wrong thing to do but it can be kinda disturbing. Luckily the movie can drown her voice else I would have to ask her to keep quiet. Hehe. Because of the movie, I bought myself the dvd although I've watched it in the cinema. Yes, my plan is to have a sing along when I play my dvd. Hehe. And now I suddenly become Abba song fanatic. I'm downloading almost all the songs in that movie and been listening to it ever since. Call me crazy but that's me. ;) Oh, lastly it's recommended for everyone to watch this movie and I'm planning to go watch the Mama Mia play in Istana Budaya this December too :) Even my bf had watched this movie twice; one in a private premier preview and 2nd time with me. His verdict : the movie makes him wanna dump all the works in Malaysia and go back pack and lead a care free life like in the movie :) See for yourself and enjoy the movie.

Journeys to the Under World (Part 1)

Generally, in most religions, we are taught to do good deeds to people or else we will be punish for all our sins done during our lives on Earth. I'm not exactly a very religious person so I'm not here to preach or teach anyone about anything relating to religions. For myself, I'm a Buddhist and Buddhism believes that there's heaven and hell and even the 'underworld' where sinners will be published. For those who frequent temples will know that temples provide a lot of books about Buddhism but most of it are in Chinese which prevent people like me who are non Chinese educated to read and understand Buddhism further．

Yesterday when I was in a temple, I saw at a corner there's a lot of books about Buddhism but all of them are in Chinese except for one. The title of the book look appealing to me and since it's the only English book there I borrowed the book. The title of the book is 'Journeys to the Under-World'.

The book was originally in Chinese and was the result of the deity 'Jigong' bringing the soul of Mr. Yang Sheng, a leading planchette handler of Sheng Xian Tang, Taiwan, to visit Hades on instructions of the Jade Emperor with intention of helping and saving human beings. The visits were completed in 62 journeys and were generally made in the night time.

According to the book, there's a total of 10 Tribunals in Hades and each tribunal have several sub division. I just complete reading Journey No. 16 which is to the Third Tribunal 'The Prison of Scooped Eyes'. I'm not going into details about this book but I just wanna highlight a few things mention in this book. And for those of you who wanna read up this book can borrowed it from any Buddhist temple.

The First Tribunal is where the soul goes to when they dies and this is also the place where the soul is registered and being investigate of his good and bad deeds during his life. If the soul is found to have done more bad deeds than good, he is then sent to the Second Tribunal to be trial.

On Mr. Yang Sheng Journey No. 6, he visited the 'Magic Mirror Pavillion'. After the soul had reported in the First Tribunal, he will be brought to this Magic Mirror Pavillion. The mirror will reflect what each and every evil deed the soul had done during his life on Earth. Later on, Mr. Yang Sheng tour 'Wang Si Cheng' (city of those who died unnatural deaths). This is the place where souls of those who have met with accidental death are sent to. In the first room in this place, Mr. Yang Sheng saw a lot of small crying babies covered in blood and upon asking the General of the place, he's told that these are the babies of those who had been aborted. The body of these babies are formed and thus they have souls. According to the book, when a baby is aborted, the baby's soul will of course have resentment and will wait until the parents die so the baby can confront them to account for the abortion. Please be a responsible parents and don't abort as the baby will be waiting for you in the other world.

Next is the Second Tribunal, which in fact is the real Tribunal for punishing souls. In every Tribunal there is a special pulpit for preaching and discourse to the souls to rehabilitate them. In this Second Tribunal, Mr. Yang Sheng visited the Odour Pool in Hades. Inside the pool he saw male and female, young and old, mixing up with strips of dung and urine.These were the souls of human beings when on Earth they are prostitutes, pimps who cheated girls, smugglers, those who used placenta of new born babies, swindlers and cheats, womanizers, gangsters, deliberate bankrupts, bribery officials and unscrupulous building contractors. These people when alive had evil hearts and therefore when they are sent to Hades, they have to smell and wobble in the excrete in this pool. It kinda give me a nausea feeling even imagining human beings in such pool of excrete not to mention to be in it. This serve a very strong reminder for everyone to not have any evil hearts or thoughts.

Next is the Hades of the Hungry Ghosts. This is the place where people when alive they are rich, spent lavishly, ate well and had no pity on the poor, needy and deserving. So when they die, they will be in here in a beautiful suit/dress and will only have one meal of vegetable broth a week. Sad isn't it? Thus it teaches us not to waste food and even though we are filthy rich, never forget the poor and needy. I will always remember not to waste my food from now and will be very thankful for the food that I managed to have.

In Journey No. 13, Mr. Yang Sheng tour 'Naihe Qiao' and Hades of Dancing. In 'Naihe Qiao' he saw a continually swaying and rocking bridge from which souls are falling to the bottom below and crying non stop. Below this bridge there are thousands of various snakes which will bite the souls once they fall. This is where people who alive have evil hearts and cheated people's money, cheated women, were instigators, cause people to quarrel and fights, took delight cheating others etc will ended up in... being bitten by poisonous snakes. When he goes to Hades of Dancing, he saw males and females all dancing in a pale hall. These are the souls of dance hostesses and dance patrons when they are alive. The floor of the hall is made of red hot iron plate and so when stepped on, the souls will burn their feet and cry aloud. These are the souls who dance for enjoyment and bodily pleasure and even to earn money or took up prostitution. Those who dance for the sake of health and exercise will not be sent here. After reading this chapter, I'm beginning to think twice of going to clubs or pubs.

Hades of Coldness, it's a place where souls are left in coldness with a very minimal clothing. Those who will be sent here are those who cheat people who entrust their property to them for safe keeping, procurers and pimps who demand large sum of money for the release of prostitutions etc from their bondage, people who are too showy, who spend recklessly and lavishly, those who prefer to spend on more expensive dresses just to show that they have a lot of money rather than to help the poor and needy and those females who take pleasure to go about scantily dressed thus exposing their bodies. Yet another reminder for me to do more good deeds.

Third Tribunal, The Prison of Scooped Eyes. In here souls will have both their eyes scooped out and left with blood oozing from the eye sockets and crying loudly. Soldiers of Hades will use a iron fork to scoop the eyes until the eye balls fell off. Then the eye balls are retrieved and fitted back into the eye sockets and wash with magic water; which will have the effect of reviving the soul from fainting.The scooping process will be carried out 3 times daily on each soul. People who always look down/despise others especially the poor and less educated, guys who love to peep, watch and read obscene books or movies, etc, people who cheated in examinations will eventually be punished here. Come to think of it, human these days be it guys or girls have most probably done most of the above mentioned sins. Sigh.

I've only read till here and am still reading the book. Will update once I have finish the book.