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January 14th 2013

Published: January 14th 2013

4 January 2013
4 more days in Bangkok in preparation for Burma, to sort out any last minute shopping, work stuff, etc.Day one spent at Pantip Plaza as usual. It is the only place in the world that has iPad minis in stock, ready to go. Memory sticks, batteries, new phone covers and an iPad mini later and we have had enough of shopping; so we stop in at Terminal 21 (a massive shopping centre that carries Thai labels instead of the usual international fare). On day two it is time to do the tourist thing for a change. We get an email from HT our foodie friend recommending a restaurant in China Town. We were planning to go that way anyway, and it sounds too good to miss so off we go. China Town is a heaving maze of alleyways and bustling side streets, packed with vendors selling everything from the most exotic (to us) foods to strings of jade beads, rolexes, glasses frames and camouflage gear. I strap on go pro and am still crossing my fingers that I have at least some usable footage to share. The food is amazing. Oh dear here I go on the food again...steamed bums and dumplings rival for space with tea leaves, shiitake mushrooms, fly infested bits of fish, scallops, crabs, dragon fruit, plucked ducks hang strung across store fronts like lanterns. The colours, the sounds, the smells.... I love these markets. We wander and wander ever deeper through lanes of dilapidated shop houses, across fetid canals that have themselves been boarded up on the sides to become markets. It seems like every inch of space in this area has become a shop. Some even have their own ac under their canvas roofs! We move on through the camera market, then the arms district, where you can buy an assault weapon or just a cross bow. I have never seen so many guns in my life - haven't been to America. Intricately painted rifle buts, telescopic sights, flack jackets, hand guns, grenade launchers. I suddenly realise that Bangkok really is the place where you can buy absolutely anything. if you want a one legged, cross dressing grandfather, with a monkey on his left shoulder and an AK47 slung over the other, eating duck pancakes with rice whiskey on the side; you can buy one.Moments later we find ourselves, quite by accident, in a leafy park with some old watch towers along the side of a canal. There is a beaming lady selling fried rice with morning glory or chicken and we have lunch for two, including bottled water for a pound. It is excellent, but I'm afraid we have missed the restaurant which HT recommended. Must have snuck past us when we were distracted by an alleyway of fascination.We keep meandering through small streets, between monasteries, along canals fringed with tiny houses each with a hanging garden, and a lazy cat. This is the secret Bangkok, where tourists don't usually linger. No bus loads of Chinese or bargey Russians here. No temple spotters and no westerners in Samui t-shirts. Just life going on as it has since forever. Ancient grannies stirring up delicious smelling meals in their massive blackened woks, children doing homework or chattering in front of TVs, red glowing altars inside each cool, dark, smokey interior, here and there a memory of colony that never was. Bangkok's name in Thai is Krung Thep Maha Nakhon which means city of angels. I am in it. In another time.As the sun starts setting we head towards the deco-esque Victory monument to marvel at the elegantly crumbling concrete wings, past Bangkok Arts grafitti wall, what is left of the old citadel wall, and onto a wild and fast river taxi back to the kingdom of gleaming temples of shopping. Just past Jim Thompsons House, my favourite house in the world, We land at the Siam centre. Gucci, Prada, Hermes and Boots reign here. We perform an act of sacrilege and go for an all you can eat sushi buffet.

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