Saturday in Bangkok

I took a little trip to the northwestern part of Bangkok this morning.  I took the Mission Van and invited Elder Seppi to go with me.  Elder Seppi and his wife just arrived in Thailand a week ago.  I drove to a section of town called Bangbuathong.  I went there to see the Missionaries apartments and to investigate potential new apartments that they might live in. 

Once we arrived in the area, I parked the Van and we hoofed it around to get a feel of the area.  We  stopped at a 7/11 for a cool drink. Elder Seppi had a bottle of water I had a cold Ovaltine. Upon exiting the store I felt a little moisture from the sky.  I mentioned to Elder Seppi that it is going to rain.  About 90 seconds later it was pouring.  Not raining hard - it was pouring. We stopped under a 6 foot by 6 foot awning on the side of the road for about an hour.  A young Thai man found shelter there too so I talked to him a lot. Beacause we talked in thai I tried to keep Elder Seppi apprised of what we were talking about. Finally it slowed a little - still raining hard and I decided that we should make our way back to the Van.  We got almost to the pedestrian overpass and we came upon a challenge.  The only way across was to wade to our destination - Water was about 8 to 10 inches deep.  So we stepped into a small restaurant, took off our leather sandals, removed our socks and then put our sandals back on again.  Oh - and we rolled up our pants. 
The photo below was taken at a different location after we had crossed the major street and had lunch.  The streets of Bangkok were flooded. It reminded me of the first few days I spent in Bangkok back in 1975, the streets were flooded then also. 


After the rain had stopped and some of the street flooding had started to recede

In the afternoon, the Meeker's and Seppi's went to IKEA to shop for some furniture.  This IKEA is at a large mall on the outskirts of Bangkok. We took mass transit for about 10 stops and then rode a shuttle bus to the Mega Bangnaa mall.  We bought a small bookcase and a shelf for storage of items under the bathroom sink.    They will deliver the items on Monday.