Bangkok day 4 - last day of first leg of holiday

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We started off our day by oversleeping, we didn’t wake until 8.30am, when we had planned to be in the market at that time! And then we only woke as the cleaner turned on the hoover outside our bedroom door (we think she wanted us out to be able to clean!). After packing up and moaning that we’d packed too much stuff we headed off for breakfast. We enjoyed an odd mix for breakfast, combining Western and Eastern foods.

After breakfast we headed out to Chatuchuk market, one of the largest markets in the world. We were expecting the skytrain to be quiet as it’s a weekend, how wrong we were. If you thought London underground gets busy in rush hour, this is nothing compared to a Bangkok Skytrain on market day! Thai people seem to have a unique way to squeeze into the smallest gap. We skipped the first train, thinking the second would be less crowded, it wasn’t! It took us ages to realise that everyone was heading to the same market as us. We got on the train about 40mins away from the market, so just didn’t even think that is where everyone could be heading! But it was. The market itself was crazy. Far, far bigger than either of us imagined, and the streets leading up to the market were rammed with food stalls and tuk tuks. The market itself was a mixture of pretty much anything money can buy. We spent a few hours browsing, stopping for the occasional drink and discussing how much money you could make selling the stuff from the market on a stall in London (we saw several stalls with T shirts for sale that we’ve seen advertised as ‘hand made by me’ in Camden market, for a fraction of the price!

After the market we decided to try out Bangkok’s metro system (so clean compared to the UK!) and went to China town for an explore. We didn’t do the walking food tour as we didn’t think we had enough time, but decided to have a wander and go to a temple. At first our wander was fun as we ended up in the backstreets where people lived and there appeared to be ‘sweatshop’ type buildings with lots of people inside on sewing machines. However we soon got lost and a little fed up with not knowing where we were as we seemed to be further and further from the main roads. We did eventually find our way back and realised where we’d gone wrong was that one of the roads was shut due to major building work. We were soon back on track and found ourselves in true Chinatown. We saw the Chinese gate and went to the Golden Buddha temple.

The temple was small but beautiful, but incredibly hot so we couldn’t stay in there for long. We decided to use the toilets there as last time Sarah was in Thailand the toilets in temples seemed decent. How wrong we were!!! We should have seen the need to take off your own shoes and put on special flip flops (which were made for small footed Thai people so didn’t even fit!) as a warning sign......but needs must and we decided to go in. They were the traditional Thai squat toilets about as clean as a portaloo in Reading festival! By now desperation had set in and we had to use them (ok for Tom, trickier for Sarah!) anyway we won’t go into any more detail but thought you’d all find this tale amusing!

After this experience we decided to head back to Sukhumvit Road (a main tourist road where our hotel was) for some civilisation as we knew it. We got the underground back, but to a point much further up than our hotel so we could walk back along the road and see some more of it that we hadn’t yet seen. Turns out we’re in a non seedy part compared to other bits of the road!

By now we were hungry and thought we’d go to the nice Thai food market by our hotel, but when we got there they were only just starting to set up, in need for something to eat we decided to see what MacDonalds is like in Thailand. Some things were gross (deep friend tuna pie!), but other things amazing – wasabi dip for your fries!

After this we headed back to the hotel and got our bags. We then hit the streets to get a taxi and discovered we needed to cross the road (no easy feat with a large backpack and a million steps on the bridges over the roads to contend with). We then set about trying to get a taxi who would put their meters on. After about 6 unsuccessful attempts we hit gold and got a nice taxi driver to take us to the train station and on to the next stage of our trip. We ended up getting to the station really early, we were told to allow an hour, so decided to allow two just in case and so we could suss out the station that looked massive. Turns out the journey took about 10 mins and the station is pretty small inside compared to the outside! So we are currently sat in Hong Kong Noodles (near the station) having a beer and trying some Dim Sum whilst we wait to get our train.

Mystery of the day - why does Sarah get such filthy dirty feet? No its not the toilet. Anyone thats ever been anywhere with me in flip flops will know my feet tend to get a little dirtier than my companions (not sure why), well today it was to the extreme. Tom and I have been everywhere together yet his feet are midly dirty and mine are totally black! And no its nothing to do with the toilet experience as they were like it before!!!

Bye for now – next blog will be from Koh Phangnan tomorrow. We’re now off to spend the night on a train.ac

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