April 4

Bangkok

Two Comments:

1. I am trying a new setup/plug-in for the images.   Hopefully this makes it easier to view the images (you can click on an image and scroll through, click on the info icon for a brief description of each image).  If you guys can, let me know if you like this setup or any recommendations on what to adjust would be very helpful.  Don’t be shy, leave a comment!

2. So I may have said I was going to do one post for every city, but once I started writing and looked at the pictures to post, the posts were going to be full novels and the image galleries were going to be MASSIVE. I think these daily ones are already too long to begin with. So, I’m back to daily posts. Sorry.

Well, I was up at 4am due to the jet lag so I worked on some posts; I’m that dedicated. Disregard the fact that I’m several days behind. Good news is my stomach feels alright; looks like I’m going to survive the street food without issue after all. It was a quiet morning until my hosts’ kid wakes up around 8am. She’s a 2 and a half year old kid with energy for days. How are kids so full of energy so fast after waking up?!? It’s unreal. Kudos to all you parents out there chasing these rugrats around 2 minutes out of bed in the morning. She acted shy (I call acting here) but once she started talking to me, we became instant buddies. I spent the next hour being shown all her toys one by one. My hosts cooked us breakfast in the meantime. Top class hospitality!

We then discuss what the plans are for the day and we decide that we will put off temples for later days and focus on the markets and other sights today. I also decide not to bring my camera for this trip so only iPhone pictures for today. We step outside and the weather hits instantaneously; instant sauna, 97*F (36*C) and 90% humidity. It’s going to be a sweaty day.

First things first, we go to the BTS Skytrain and acquire a rabbit card for 100 baht and charge it up with 200 baht. If you come to Bangkok and will be around for a few days using their skytrain, I think it’s a no brainer to get this instead of trying to do the one day paper passes. It works a bit quicker through the gates (magnetic) and you can look down on others as they struggle to get the paper passes into the machines (damn tourists) or wait in line to buy a new paper pass. We jump on the train and head a couple of stops over in the direction we wanted to go and head back down to the street to catch a cab towards the market since it is off the skyrail path. Destination: Khlong Toey Wet Market. This is where the locals buy their meat and produce. So chicken, beef, pork, duck, fish, insects, vegetables, you name it, they probably have it there.

Scooter Taxi: As we get down to the street, my buddy asks, “do you want to take the scooter taxi?” My head said no, but what came out of my mouth was “heck yeah!” So we walk to a spot where the scooter guys are hanging out, my buddy talks to them and they agree on 60 baht for both of us. We wait for a second scooter to arrive and a rat runs right behind the parked scooter into the sewers while we were waiting. Don’t ask my why but I immediately thought ‘Splinter!’ My buddy gives me his half of the cash, I put it in my pocket, second scooter arrives and we hop on. The guy had a “I’m gonna mess with this guy” grin on his face when he picked me up. We take off (shorts and helmetless, mind you) and these guys are racing through the streets. Cars are stuck in a traffic jam and we’re squeezing through any gap these guys can find. Lane splitting at its finest; crossing over frogger style to the next lane if the current one is blocked. We come to a red light, but not a problem, the guys turn left without slowing down or even looking at cross traffic (left hand drive roads again; so similar to our right hand turns), they cut across the street, pull a u-turn into oncoming traffic, head towards the intersection again, driving forwards AND BACKWARDS through cars stuck in traffic because our lane was blocked a couple of times, make it to the intersection and make another left turn to continue down the road we were originally on. I feel like that run on sentence does that event justice. I should have hit about 20 mirrors by now. We lost the other guy in this sequence so we are now full throttle down the road. We get cut off by a car and did do a panic stop which I think even scared my driver. We finally see the other guys parked in the distance and the other driver pulls away as we pull up. I pay my driver 40 baht thinking that my buddy paid his driver (since he left) and my driver gives me a thumbs up and drives away. Turns out my buddy didn’t pay his driver; we just took a ride across town for 20 baht each. For you folks too lazy to do math, that’s 60 cents each. Awesome!
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Khlong Toey Wet Market: We pull into the wet market and I immediately notice three things. First, the smells hit you instantaneously; it is a mixture of funky odors with the fish smell being the strongest. Second, this place is MASSIVE; it is like a mini city. Third, we stick out like sore thumbs; there are not many tourists here. The first thing I walk by is a guy manhandling a live chicken trying to get it into a large rice bag. Looks like an execution is about to go down. I want to be able to keep eating chicken while I’m here so I didn’t hang out for the execution. There are cages jam packed with chickens, cages packed with ducks, ladies cooking whole chickens and whole ducks over their grills across the cages with the live chickens and ducks, trays with fish splashing away as they are squeezed in amongst other fish, buckets filled with dead insects, buckets filled with live insects, frogs both alive and skinned, beef of all varieties (no live cows though) including the heads, chickens leashed to the top of cages, and the list goes on. If I was on the edge towards becoming vegetarian, this might have pushed me, but I enjoy meat too much so no aversion. We walk around for over an hour in this market. There are also all kinds of vegetables, rice, spices, fruits, and even non food items all over the place. The prices are very cheap as well. I believe my buddy picked up 3 mangos for 40 baht. There are also lots of guys with huge buckets on moving dollies (is that the right spelling?) going through the aisles picking up items on lists they were given. You can give them a list of what you want and they will go gather it for you. We definitely kept getting in their way. I wanted to take a lot of pictures here, but was afraid it was disrespectful. I didn’t think they would be too appreciative of me taking close ups of their stands. I thought how would you like it if someone came to your job site and started taking pictures of everything. I regret not taking more pictures. You’ll have to live with the few shots I took from afar.

Chatuchak Weekend Market: From here, we made our way to the Chatuchak Weekend Market. Now, I know I said the last place was massive, but this place just made that place feel small. This market is so big that the map of Bangkok that we were using, also had a map of Chatuchak Market on the back. A quick search online considers it one of the largest markets in the world. This place has a significant amount of tourists mixed in with the locals. I think you can buy nearly anything here. Maybe not a car but everything else. Food, clothes, silk, furniture, art. Heck you can even buy a cat or a dog here. This place is literally a maze of shops. Aside from whatever shopping you feel like doing, two things I think you should try here are coconut ice cream (this was fantastic) and eating at one of the stands/restaurants here (food was great). The coconut drinks are also very popular but we didn’t get one here. I doubt any tourist comes to Bangkok during the weekend and misses this; you shouldn’t break that trend. With lunch, we lasted nearly 3 hours here taking a beating from the sun and humidity. So we head to an indoors place for a bit…MBK.

MBK: I told you we were visiting a lot of shops today right? MBK is kind of like a mall, but a 2000 shops on 8 floors kind of mall. And shops range from legit stuff at prices higher than US prices to knock off electronics at prices so low you think perhaps it is a scam. Being the dork that I am, I request we go check out some of the electronics. Holy crap are Beats (by Dre & Monster -we’ll see how that lawsuit goes) items popular here. I find a beats pill and they are asking for 440 baht for this. Let me repeat that, 440 baht! Hmm, let me test this thing out. It has bluetooth, I’ll try pairing my phone. I hit the button and a voice chimes, “The bluetooth dewice is a weady for paiwing” in the worst english accent ever. Uh oh…but it pairs with my phone. I play some music and, wow, this thing isn’t too bad. I offer the lady 300 baht, but she tells me she can’t go that low. We go back and forth and agree on 380 baht; great I just negotiated $2 dollars off, haha.  She pulls out the item in the box from behind the counter and I’m still skeptical (make sure its not a box of rocks) so I ask if I can open it up and play with it before I take it. She agrees. I open the item, pair my phone with the pill and make sure it works like the sample one. Everything checks out. Beats pill acquired, err faux beats pill acquired….for the equivalent of TWELVE dollars! A real one costs $200. Even if this thing breaks before I get back stateside, it will be a good purchase. I look for some lenses for my camera, but the one I wanted was almost $700 so I figure I’ll just wait until I get back home. Anyhow, if you go to Bangkok, go to the MBK. It’s pretty cool.

From there we start heading back to my buddy’s place since we are going out for one of their friend’s birthday party later that night. On the way back, my tour guide had to pick some items up at the grocery store for his family so we stop at the mall. Yes, you heard me right, some of the grocery stores in Bangkok are in the malls. And on the top floor no less, so up 5 or 6 flights on the escalator to pick up groceries and then back down. One thing I recommend whenever you travel to a new country is to always check out what their grocery stores are like. I know it sounds silly, but seeing the different kinds of foods and setups in the store always intrigue me. Even seeing how the similar foods (from cheetos to gatorade) look in their foreign packages is really interesting. We pick up the stuff and head back to my buddy’s place.

We clean up, their nanny shows up (living the high life), and we head out to the spot for the birthday party. I won’t bore you with the evening activities ( 🙂 ), but I will say that by 10pm or so, my eyelids are as heavy as that base rock from the Mt. Cook trip. The jet lag kicked in and I was struggling the rest of the night. Luckily, on this night, I was hanging out with a married couple with a kid, hehe; they weren’t the up till 3am type. Phew.

Cheers!

Khlong Toey Wet Market Aisle Khlong Toey Wet Market Aisle2 Khlong Toey Wet Market Meat Khlong Toey Wet Market Meat Khlong Toey Wet Market Crowd Chatuchak Lunch Thai Iced Tea - you MUST try one Chicken Cashew Nut Stir Fry Chatuchak Chatuchak Chatuchak cooking for the masses Chatuchak Pets Large Pan Chatuchak Chatuchak More Pets Chatuchak Coconut Ice Cream Meat Stick Chatuchak Art Grocery Caramel Grocery Spices Food Court Siam Paragon Pathum Wan Pad Thai Siam Paragon RR Grocery Dragon Fruit Aquarium Siam Paragon McClaren Mall from Train Station