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Our Round The World Trip home page is here.
Part Six is here.

October 9 (Tuesday, Day 8, Bangkok, continued) –

Tong took us to a local restaurant that she used to eat at a lot when she was getting her guide degree.  We were the only foreigners in it.  We let her order for us.  She ordered a seafood and noodle soup (like ramen) for Filbert and duck on rice for me and her.  Then she ordered pork satay with peanut sauce for us and a bowl of the soup broth for herself.  She also had an iced coffee.  The total bill for the three of us for all of this was $5.10. 

I saw that there was a toilet at this restaurant and needed to use it.  It was a squat kind and I’m familiar with them but I couldn’t figure out how to flush it.  I told Tong and she said “pour water in it”.  Now it all made sense.  The squat toilet was on the floor (naturally!) and next to it was a built-in “sink” full of water (also on the floor) with a shabby plastic bowl in it.  You simply take the bowl and fill it with water from the full sink and dump it in the toilet.  Voila, it flushes!  I couldn’t figure out why there was this built-in basin of water on the floor with a bowl in it but then I understood.

Then we went to Vimanmek Palace which used to be the summer home for royalty.  By then we were tired (and Filbert was very sweaty) and although we hadn’t used 10 hours of her time, we had seen enough so we went back to the Hyatt.  And neither of us really wanted to take off our shoes even one more time for another temple or mansion!

Reclining Buddha

October 10 (Wednesday, Day 9, Bangkok) –

We were up around 6 and had a leisurely breakfast in the Regency Club.  The wireless internet is free if you are in the Regency Club but if you use the wired port in the room it’s about $30/day.  (Don’t ask me why???)  And, you can’t really get a good wireless signal in the room.  So, we were in the Regency Club for about 2.5 hours.  But, since nothing really opens until 10, we weren’t in any hurry.

While we were back in the room, our transformer exploded.  Filbert thinks we had too many electrical devices plugged in it.  We now had a purpose for the day – to replace the transformer we bought in Venice.  We went to three different malls and several storefront locations and finally found one. 

We ate lunch at Thailand’s biggest Thai food chain (per the English menu that had a picture of each of the 135 items).  Filbert had the fried scallops and papaya salad (two items that were paired on the menu for $2.10) and he ordered his papaya salad “spicy.”   It was.  Very.  I had the pork and minced rice salad ($1.65) and said “no” to spicy and it still burned my lips (but in a good way).  Mine came with a wedge of raw cabbage, too, which helped tame the fire.  I also ordered a tamarind slush ($0.80) and Filbert ordered a watermelon slush ($0.80).  We were quite content with our lunches and would happily eat there again.

Thai fast food

I had really wanted to eat at one of the million street vendor stalls, but it was pouring rain and around 90 degrees and most of the street vendors don’t have tables and chairs so we thought a food court type of place would be a better idea.  Vendors sell whole fish, little sausage balls, chicken wings, various noodle dishes and all sorts of things that we don’t even know what they are.  Most Thai do NOT cook at home since it is cheaper to eat out.  So, they eat from a street vendor or at a food court or something like that.

Rainy Bangkok

 
We’ve noticed that at any given time, about 10% of the population wears a light yellow polo shirt with the King’s crest on it and so then I decided I had to have one.  The Thai people LOVE their King and this is NOT an official uniform, but these shirts are sold everywhere and everyone seems to wear them.  I found one on sale for $4.50 in one of the malls.  (It’s probably $3 at a street market!)  We’re trying to get one for Filbert, too, but so far none are big enough.  It’s yellow since the King was born on the day of the week that is represented by yellow.  My day is orange (Go LadyVols!) and Filbert’s is red.

Well, we got to the Regency Club at 5:30 and the guy just came around to ask if we wanted anything else since the food is being taken away.  That means it is 7:30.  Time to go to the night market!  We didn’t look out our windows as we were getting ready for the night market.  We went down to the lobby only to be surprised by the pouring rain.  We decided to skip it and watched HBO.

October 11 (Thursday, Day 10, Bangkok) –

Tong picked us up at 6:30 AM to go see the Tiger Temple (www.tigertemple.org).  On the way, we drove by salt farms and shrimp farms.  She also took us through a little town where the people that can’t afford to rent space for a market stall literally set up their wares ON the train tracks.  The trains come 8 times a day and a whistle blows giving them 4 minutes to clear the tracks of their items.  Then they go back to the tracks to sell their fruits, vegetables, clothing, prepared food, whatever it is.  It was amazing to see the tracks packed full of stuff knowing that at some point, the owner would have to pick it all up for a few minutes.  No one has ever died, or so they tell us.

Railroad Market

We stopped at a temple whose interior was completely done in 3D carved teak.  The government was going to tear down the temple in the 70s since the province had too many temples (per the government) but the locals poured money into it and basically dared the government to tear it down.  It’s still standing and is very impressive.  We’ve noticed that the Thais spend a lot of money on their temples and offerings.  Each neighborhood has a temple and they seem to be more expensive than our neighborhood churches and considering this is a developing country, it makes it that much more impressive.

Teak carvings

We also stopped at a porcelain factory where we saw about 15 men and women painting porcelain with tiny paintbrushes.  Nothing is for sale at this factory since all of the orders are placed and then it takes about 4 months for the porcelain to be created.  This factory produces the porcelain for the King and the Prince, among others.  It was very exquisite.

Long live the King

We went to the floating market which is a very touristy place (and Tong knew we didn’t want to do touristy things but we were okay with this).  It’s a market set up on a bunch of canals and the people in the boats are actually selling goods.  We rented a boat and the three of us went for a ride.  Tong knew we liked to eat (and we hadn’t had breakfast) so she had our oarsman stop at one of the boats and ordered us one $0.60 bowl of rice with red pork with a sweet sauce on it for us.  She got a $0.60 vegetarian bowl for herself (but let us taste it and it was vinegary and spicy – very good) since the Vegetarian Festival started today and will last for 9 days where many Buddhists won’t eat meat.  As a result, a lot of the food vendors only sell vegetarian dishes during this time.  They fly yellow flags with red writing to indicate that they are vegetarian.  We ate our pork and rice bowl in record time.  (The oarsman sees to it that the bowls and utensils get returned to the correct floating restaurant.)  At the next stop, she bought Filbert a $0.60 bowl of noodles in a spicy broth and me a $0.60 bowl of noodles with no broth and I saw that she put 3 spoons of sugar on mine before stirring it all up.  Filbert’s was very spicy and mine wasn’t.   I put some of his broth on mine to spice it up a bit.  (There seem to be 4 condiments for Thai food – sugar, soy sauce, hot cut up little peppers in vinegar and crushed red pepper flakes.  They tend to put three of the four on each of their dishes.) 

Braving the floating market

A little while later she bought us chicken legs and pork skewers for $1.20 total but they tended to taste like teriyaki items you could get at any US mall food court – not bad, but not what we want to eat while in Thailand!  The boat finally took us out of the market place and took us along the other canals that are lined with houses.  It was very peaceful back there.  At the end, Tong bought us deep fried finger bananas and as everyone knows, anything deep fried is yummy!  She also asked a vendor if I could have a fresh tamarind so I could see what a fresh one is like.  It was as long as my finger and looked like a very large peanut in the shell.  After easily taking off the woody peel, the texture of it reminded me of eating a date (and it had a squarish pit in it, too) and it’s taste is kind of sour.  It was very good.  By the way, now that you’re thinking, “Snookums and Filbert are pigs” (and we are!), Tong told us that we wouldn’t have time to have lunch due to the timing of the Tiger Temple.  So, we had to pack it in when we could.

Floating market food

More floating market food

After our feast at the floating market it was time to get back in the car and continue our journey.  We stopped at a Thai handicraft market where we saw the men chiseling the wood to make the various 3D teak scenes.  Tong had warned us to not buy anything since it would be overpriced.  We kept telling her that she didn’t need to worry about us buying anything, anywhere!  We also stopped at the Bridge of the River Kwai for a few minutes and some pictures.  Then we got to Tiger Temple around noon.  Now the real fun began.

Bridge over the River Kwai (note Snookums’ Long Live the King polo shirt)

Bridge over the River Kwai (note Snookums’ Long Live the King polo shirt)

The trip continues in Part Eight, here.
Part Six is here.
Our Round The World Trip home page is here.