Another crazy characteristic of Bangkok hit us pretty quickly: MALLS! The malls in Bangkok put America to shame. These guys are not messing around when it comes to shopping–their centers are huge and sparkling and plentiful. We went to one six story mall where each floor had a different city as it’s theme. They had Tokyo, London, Paris, San Francisco (We’re now definitely west of the US).
The culture shock took several days to get over and the most difficult thing to get used to was the number of foreigners. I found myself staring at foreigners as they passed. Who are they? What are they doing here? I finally began to understand why Indians stared at us so much.