Chinatown and half naked dancing girls

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Chinatown is interesting in any place, but Bangkok's Chinatown is pretty great. It has what they say is the largest golden buddha in Thailand, at Wat Traimit, which you can read about shortly in another post about all the Wats. There is a thieves market here too. The night market is really something - it has all the treasures and all the trash like everywhere else, but it also has:

• all the displays and presentations of fabulous fake stones,
  
• a temple on either side,
  
• clashes with police,
  
• the fun of catching a tuk-tuk there and back,
  
• and a stage with near naked dancing girls.
  
  

The clashes with police are on quite a scale. What I saw were the drunk guys watching the dancing girls and giving the surrounding police a little bit of trouble. Plus the sellers at the market: there are certain times when you can start stalls, move stalls, put stalls in the middles etc. The sellers kept trying to start up their stalls in the middle of the road before time, and the police just kept walking up and down getting them to move off.

Its similar to Khao San Rd where I am. It's something like:

• 2pm road closes to traffic, (opening again about 5/6am or so)
  
• The stalls set up along the side of the road, there's a lot of foot traffic.
  
• About 11pm they can move their stalls to the middle of the road.
  
• About 2am or so (?) they have to pack up all stalls, leaving only the clubbing and prostitution etc foot traffic, and getting it ready to open up to morning traffic again
  
  

Anyway, here's some photos taken at Chinatown, including Wat Traimit photos and the other temple across the road.

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Photos

Chinatown Wat
Looking particularly lovely at night.

The Solid Gold Buddha
At Wat Traimit, 3m tall, 5.5t

The Chinatown gate
Also looking lovely at night

Another Chinatown Wat
Just next to Wat Traimit and a school

Bells of wishes/prayers
Basically, you pay for each one you want to ring. I can see the first one means safety and the second one means people/nation... something like that. If you are interested, check out the other post on wats - there are also places where you have boxes with the labels, and you put money in each box and pray/wish for that thing.

Some of the dancing girls
During the night market