A day of searching

Hello!!  Day 2 in Thailand got off to an early start with us getting up early to get ready for our flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok.  We started the day off with a great buffet breakfast and then headed into the airport to board our plane (no flight delays today), the flight was only a couple of hours long and felt like heaven compared to our 17 hour debacle the day before. Once in Bangkok we decided to try and change our transferring flight to chiang mai to an earlier flight but were unsuccessful so we decided we would kill some time and head into bangkok to do some shopping. we took the train downtown and also got our first experience riding in a tuk tuk (very fun and probably not all that safe).
We got to MBK mall (a huge mall in the heart of bangkok) and quickly found ourselves overwhelmed with the huge amount of clothing and the cheapness of it all... we were in the shopping mecca of thailand and were pumped to test our our bartering skills!....  I decided to go first, I found a shirt and asked "how much?" the women responded "200 baht (which is approximately $6 us) , I said "how about 150 baht?" and she said "NO"! to my astonishment i had failed at my first bartering attempt  (I think this is going to become a constant theme for the trip....I guess im no Craig Murray). Oh well, there were thousands of more shops to keep trying, we ended up buying a few tee shirts and some sunglasses for candice but I dont think we would have made any bartering experts very proud... we seemed to constantly get denied on our attempts....not that it matters that much considering everything is dirt cheap, but it would still be nice to get the hang of this bartering thing. the mall is a zoo and is quite overwhelming with the selection and hustle bustle of it all, at one point candice set her bags down to try on a shirt and then realized her bag was gone, we looked around the shirt shop and asked the women working there if they had seen her bag and they basically told us to" get lost", i found another guy working there and he said he hadnt seen it either. Candice was quite upset and we stood near the shop sulking for a few minutes when the guy i had asked earlier came up to me with candices bag in hand...we were thrilled and very grateful so i gave him a tip. Looking back on it, we are pretty sure the women at the stand stole her bag and then the guy felt bad for us so he returned it (probably a scam to get money.....and it worked haha).
we were on a deadline to get back to the airport so we grabbed a taxi (once again didnt do very well on the bartering - i tried hard to get a cheaper rate but was only able to knock off 50 baht from the original price (i SUCK at this). driving in bangkok is an experience id rather not have very often, our cab was pretty much on three wheels the entire time to the airport, there are basicallyy no rules, i dont even know why they have lanes painted on the highway as nobody uses them, it is basically just a free for all. we got back to the airport  alive and flew into chiang mai.
when we arrived in chiang mai it was already dark and we hadnt booked a hotel (as per the suggestions of everyone we talked to who has been to thailand before) so we pulled out the lonely planet book and found a place in the heart of the city- we got to the hotel and it was too much money (around $150 us) so we grabbed our bags and walked to another hotel, the next one was only $50 us but it was gross so we fled that scene and kept looking. we talked to several people on the street who recommended hostels for approximately $10 a night....it seems like no one in this city stays at normal nice hotels, we went to a couple more places which were super expensive for thai standards (around $100 a night and were ugly as hell). we were starting to get really frustrated as we had been searching for a couple hours now and were super jet lagged from the travel the day before. finally we found a place called "de chai"and it was exactly what we were looking for...gorgeous rooms, great service, good location and a pretty good price (around $90 a night....i know all you seasoned thailand travelers are probably having heart attacks thinking about spending that here but to that i say "SCREW OFF" haha...we realized three things today: 
1) we suck at bartering,
2) we dont like doing things without a plan (its too stressful),
 and 3) we are snooty travelers who like nice accommodations

CK & CK