We slept in very late the next day, and then went back to the coffee stand to complete the waking up process. This was the second morning in a row that we had visited the coffee stand, and I think the owner was hoping for some regular business from us from now on. Sorry, we’re out of here tonight…
After coffee we went to explore the new shopping center, called Terminal 21. We discovered quite by accident that it was a themed shopping mall. Each floor is decorated like a different international city. There a floor for Paris, Tokyo, San Francisco, Istanbul, and so on. We went around taking pictures of the different floors, and even discovered that the themes extended to the bathrooms. We tried the bathrooms in Paris and Tokyo, and they were great. It was a really well designed mall. At the top floor we bought tickets to see Mission Impossible 4 later on that evening. We were able to get seats on a sofa – the back row was made up entirely of four big sofas, with reclining seats. The price of our tickets was half the price of Japan, so it turned out to be a great deal.
We left the shopping center to go back to our hotel, finish packing, and then check out. The hotel said that they could watch our bag for us until we left for the airport, so we stored it with them and then went back across the street to the same massage place. This time we asked for a Thai oil massage. They put us together in a different room this time, with an elevated massage table that had a hole for your face. Kuniko’s masseuse seemed upset when she discovered that we were wearing clothes under our pajamas. “Take all off!”, she said. We obliged, and then they went to work rubbing oil on our backs and legs. It felt great – and they were very thorough. I spent most of the 90 minute massage thinking about baseball, however.
We finished the massage without incident, and then went back to Terminal 21 for lunch, drinks and the movie. After the trailers and just before the movie, there was a moment of culture shock as they asked everyone to stand to pay respects to the king of Thailand. Everybody stood while we watched some scenes from his long life of helping the Thai people set to inspirational music. For an instant I considered not standing – but then I remembered how strict they are in this country about disrespecting the king. You can end up in jail for a couple of years for badmouthing him. So I stood, and watched the one minute video. Weird moment, but as Kuniko said – “when in Rome…”
Our last stop before the airport was the balcony bar at the Westin hotel. We sat outside on the balcony with a clear glass table and clear glass wall – it felt like you would fall at any minute. We drank sidecars and watched all the activity below us and enjoyed recapping the trip. It was a good one for us – plenty of relaxation to get us started on the new year. We chit-chatted with the staff, entirely made up of beautiful girls who spoke pretty good English. They seemed happy to talk with us, because it looked like a slow night for them.
Finally we wrapped things up, picked up our luggage and caught a taxi to the airport. We still had a couple hours to kill at the airport, so we did a little bit of walking around until our flight was ready. We departed at 2:20 am and slept through all the way to Shanghai, and then slept again on the two hour connecting flight to Kansai airport. Piece of cake!
