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Published: January 13th 2012
Damnoen Saduak Floating Market
Right hand boat has a wok of boiling oil and deep fried bananas. That is why we are on the bridge!K- Actually six nights but who is counting?! We are loving Bangkok. I will let the photos do the talking for the impressive major sights (Grand Palace, Wat Po etc) but although they are spectacular what we are really enjoying is (as usual) the food. There is food everywhere. Every type of Thai cuisine you have ever heard off plus alot you havent! It is impossible to walk more than about 5 meters down a street without being able to buy a different snack - satay, pad thai, mango & sticky rice, noodle soup, Tom Yam, scorpions, grasshoppers (yep - see photos!) etc etc. Everywhere. For 50 cents to a dollar a piece! We are in heaven and it is fortunate that we are also walking miles each day as the calorie count must be obscene!
We are not staying on the Khao San Road - the major Farang (foreigner) area of Thailand. We are instead enjoying a local (albeit no way tourist free area) pretty close by- but one where you may still have to point at your food. Or where the laundry guy doesnt quite understand you want DRY washing back. Or the local cop is
offering you whisky after an all day drinking session (him not us and the whisky for is for Mark - I got some weird sugar cane juice that looked like urine!).....and then he asks why UK policeman don't carry guns whilst waving his revolver in the air! We made our excuses and left!
It all usually it works out OK. And to be fair the Kho Sahn Road is not that bad - it is much wider and cleaner than previously and there are lots of pretty good food stalls (mango and sticky rice..heaven) and very little hassle. And Premiership / FA cup football. Which as we beat Man City makes Bangkok my lucky city (as against Kathmandu....which is still not to be discussed!)
Having enjoyed several days of gluttony and obtained our visas for Myanmar (phew!) we decided that we should explore a bit further afield. We therefore took a train down to Kanchanaburi and the Bridge of the River Kwai. When first built this was actually the bridge over the River Kware but the 1957 British film resulted in a name change in the 1960s. Before we boarded the train we popped in to the next
door market for breakfast - only to find that the stall we had chosen was in fact a private catering area for a local TV company who were making a soap! They kindly let us gatecrash, gave us our delicious pork and noodle soup for free and even offered us parts as "extras" but we had to decline the latter as we were committed to our trip.
After a 4 hour train ride we arrived in Kanchanaburi and paid a sobering visit to an excellent museum which gave the history. Statistics are not perfect but around 116,000 men (aprox. 16,000 prisoners of war and 100,000 "unknown" impressed Asian labourers) are believed to have died during the construction of the infamous Death Railway between Thailand and Burma- a mere 250 miles in length. Most of the deaths were from sickness, malnutrition and exhaustion. After strolling around one of the POW cemetries (how young and how quickly they died) we headed off to the actual bridge. I have been here before and remembered it as a bit of an anti climax (it is very small) but still a nice place to spend a little time in remembrance.......Mmmm - things have changed
Beer snacks Bangkok style #1.....Scorpion
More of a nutty flavor. Like Lobster the best bit is the claws. Mark made sure that the guy stopped to remove the sting out of the tail!! a little since 1996. It was like a carnival. Mobbed with tour groups and kids - we literally had to push our way on for the obligatory photo. The music was blaring and there were tacky tourist stalls everywhere but worst of all was the rainbow patterned mini train (think Disneyland) crossing the bridge to and fro. OMG. Words fail me - see photo.
We continued our exploration by taking a couple of buses to the town of Damnoen Saduak which is home to a traditional floating market. This is a very touristy place but it is a daily market whereas the more traditional ones only run at weekends - and we will fly to Myanmar on Friday. Our research indicated that if you get there very early you can miss the day trippers from Bangkok. The only way to do that was to stay the night there and so we did. It is a bit of a one horse town but we found a row of food stalls (no restaurants even if we had wanted one) and settled in to a DVD before an early night.
6.30am saw us heading towards the market and by 7.10am we
were on our own private boat chugging amongst the food stalls (yes there is a theme here!). The market was still very quiet, just opening up and there were still some Monks paddling their boats amongst the stalls being given alms. We were the only tourists and we just mooched around buying the odd snack and taking photos of the vegetable sellers. By 8am several tourist boats had arrived and by 9am there were more tourists than vendors and a bit of a traffic jam on the water. We were very glad we had got there early - nothing makes a good travel day better than making an extra effort and having it pay off!
We are now back in Bangkok and fly to Myanmar tomorrow. We do not expect to be able to blog there so will try and remember everything and post something on our return on January 31.
And also- if anyone is wondering why we haven't had THAT night in Bangkok - see http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/about/slavery
It has been really hard to edit the photos of the last week so there are more than usual. Please scroll down!
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