We needed to get Indian Visas which take 5 working days to process, so our long stay was in part to get this sorted. We are now all ready to go to India for the closing stages of the trip. On with the little stories!
We wanted to see the Royal Barge Museum, so we followed the road signs - they led us down a narrower and narrower path, and we eventually found a viewing spot with the help of a local, who assured us that a) the museum was closed and b) what we were looking at were the barges anyway.
We are wary of scams involving redirection, but this guy didn't seem to have any agenda. The building looked empty, and these boats looked regal - I guess we were just expecting more of them!
They are not often used, only for extra special events. The last time was for the King's 80th Birthday.
The boats were well decorated, as you'd expect with regal transport.
On our second day in Bangkok and Princesses birthday, we went to the Chatuchak markets, also known as the JJ markets, and as the weekend markets. Not confusing...honest.
These markets are huge! With the heat and the cramped isles, its hard to think, let alone make any purchases. But these markets had everything - clothes, animals, household stuff, trinkets (lots!), food and so many other things I can't name right now. We walked around getting hot and grumpy trying to pick clothes suitable for work once we arrive in Amsterdam. The plan is to post a box to our pal Mark in London, so we don't have to lug work clothes around the rest of our trip.
Unfortunately, we didn't get much here, so we had to go looking around the shopping malls too. Princess didn't seem to mind that too much at all. Even Toolman didn't seem to hesitant to get into the malls!
During one of our wanders, we found a building with a Toyota 2000GT on the ground floor.
It turns out that it is a building, sponsored by Toyota, where the youth can come and hang out, read design books, and study. A neat place, although everything is branded Toyota of course.The one thing that stood out was this segway-esqe design concept. Toolman had seen it on the internet, but this was a chance to get up close:
Basically is for personal transport - you sit in it and get around. Sort of like a electric wheelchair, only much cooler - I mean c'mon, its got colored lights!
Another of the delights in Bangkok is cruising up the river. There are boats all day, picking people up from the piers every 15 minutes or so. The travelling is comfortable, and you get a great look at the buildings and temples that are near the banks.
The boat we are on is slightly flasher then the one pictured, but not by much. it has better splash guards, and seats bolted to the floor. But in most regards, this is the kind of boat we are on.
Cruising the river shows the slum-type housing in some places - this isn't close to the worst we saw!
There are odd markets for the locals, selling dried buggered-if-i-can-recognise-it items of all description, in addition to live turtles, snakes, eels, bugs and fish - presumably for eating! The smell is horrendous!
The place we stayed at (near Ko San road - the farang hangout in Bangkok) had this cool impromptu pub. Thai people seem to love VWs - we saw lots of looked after Beetles too.
This is typical of a street market - so many good tee shirts, no space in pack to buy them!
This is also typical of street markets - selling anyhing that might have value to someone. Anyone need half a digital camera -Sony I think?
This is actually a vehicle! We saw it driving around. It is a motorbike back half, with a shack/front-trailer front half. The blind spot on this thing must really annoying! Still, if you need stickers, look no further.
This is typical to the low-cost approach to problems in Thailand. This is a string of street lights, held together with MacGyver's favorite fix-it tool, tape! Wiring is a scary business over here. It seems to be afterthoughts a lot of the time. Midway through construction, someone thought "Hey! we might need power to these lights!". Thankfully the other guy was like "No problems, we'll just string it between the poles and sticky tape it together..."
Bangkok (and Thailand in general) has Legions of stray animals - mainly Dogs and Cats. For the most part they seem happy, and not too many are overly-skinny. A bit of a flea problem for some of them though. Lonely Planet suggests there are something like 120,000 stray dogs, which I'd believe now. They are everywhere!
Bangkok is a really interesting city. On the one hand, its hot, dirty, smelly and above all, busy, but on the other it has some amazing sights to offer as you have hopefully read about by now.
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