Thailand: Day 1 and Melinda's arrival

Once we were settled into our hotel, we took a long walk around the area to familiarize ourselves with our new home for the week. We grabbed some delicious Thai food at a fancy local hotel, the bill was around 680 Baht, or $23 USD. We were beginning to feel the effects of jet lag, so with full bellies and our air conditioners turned full blast we went to bed at 5pm local time.....
Melinda arrived at 6am. She rode the overnight bus from Roi Et to Bangkok. Once we caught up and exchanged gifts, we met mom and Allison down stairs for breakfast. I must be a glutton for bad coffee, because I again ordered the coffee and was served undrinkable black lava.Over a Western style breakfast of fried eggs and toast, Melinda gave us an introductory lesson in Thai that covered Hello, Thank You, No, and Not Spicy. She also provided a lot of insight into the culture and answered all kinds of questions ranging from her experiences as the ONLY white person at her school to "lady boys."
We set off to take the sky train. Along the way we stumbled across 1 of 2 Starbucks within walking distance of out hotel. Iced Teas in hand we headed off to the Chatuchak market which is the worlds largest flea market. It was amazing! We must have only seen 1/4 of it, but we did some MAJOR shopping. We ate lunch off one of the vendors, chicken shwarma in lavash. There are a lot of Indians and people from the Middle East in Bangkok so a lot of food is familiar. Melinda taught us Thai style bargaining, and we soon discovered that she could use her status as a English teacher to get better prices. We have LOTS of treasures from the market. Once we shopped till we dropped was attempted to hail a cab home with no luck.
The taxis here are very interesting. They never want to use the meter and instead attempt to make a deal upfront to take you to your destination. The streets are wild and un-drivable to anyone who is not native to Bangkok, and the motor bikes are terrifying. We were not able to find a taxi willing to drive us back to our hotel, so back to the sky train we went. It was not that busy and we were back at the hotel within 30 mins.
After a short rest, we ventured out to dinner at a local seafood restaurant. Allison and I both ordered soups, which we requested not spicy and they had NO SPICE. I guess that is better than burning your mouth off. Mom had grilled sea bass with sauteed spinach, and Melinda enjoyed a steak sandwich with fries. Apparently most restaurants serve a menu of thai and western food. Melinda says spaghetti Bolognese is ALWAYS on the menu, and English LOVE it.
We were pretty exhausted from the day of shopping in the heat and headed to bed around 9. We scheduled a tour with the hotel for the Floating Market on Sunday, boy did we get taken for a ride!!