I felt like getting out of ground Bangkok for a little bit and went up to the 59th floor of the Banyan Tree Hotel. The 61-storey property is famed for its open-air rooftop Vertigo Grill and Moon Bar. The space was converted from its original feature, a helicopter pad. The presidential suit is THB 27710 and a regular king size bed is THB 5610 ($187 US Dollars) Click here to see the link to the room http://roomsvillas.banyantree.com/bangkok/Reservations/Rooms/Banyan-Tree-Club-Room-King. Now the Bar restaurants resembles a big ship on an ocean of buildings. So I went to see it for my self. I wanted to catch the sunset but it was rather an overcast day. The city lights started to come up slowly. I could still see the river on West Bangkok. There is and strict casual dress code ... read more

I moved on to the advanced class of fruit carving. Mint, my instructor and amazing fruit carving artist showed me two different techniques for carving flowers in a watermelon and a cantaloupe. I recorded in video some of the steps and when I have time I will upload to you tube and add them to this post.... read more

I had to be out of the door by 0630 if I wanted to see the monks rolling into town. People exchange offerings like food, soap and basic needs for blessings. And if you are lucky besides blessings you will also get an amulet. A few monks leave their temples to collect food for the rest of the monks that stay in the temple. They walk around barefoot with shiny bowls for people to deposit their oferings on. Once the bowl is full they have to return. I saw 3 monks, they received the offerings, give the blessings and put the food behind a wall in a big bag and do it all over. This gave me the opportunity to take a few shots but I didn’t want to be too invasive and unrespectful in such ... read more

I looked for a floating marked and was pleased to find something a little bit different from the floating market that I visited before: “floating kitchens”. Ladies pulled up on their boats by the steps on the sides of the brige and cook food, mainly seafood and there are little tables and little stools for customers to sit on and eat on the steps. A waitress takes the order and delivers it to the boat lady and brings the food from the boats to the people. The waitress also delivers the payment. Super interesting. I spend some time watching and trying to figure out how to photograph what was going on and capture the atmosphere properly without a wide wide angle. I forgot I had my gopro in the pocket and could have filmed the restaurant ... read more

1. WONGWAIAN TRAIN STATION My new plan is to go somewhere each weekend, repeat or not, doesn’t matter but go somewhere. Pim, my instructor for the Basic Thai cooking skills class was trying to organize the group of students to do this trip but at the end of the day she was schedule for a pro class on Saturday and everyone else had something to do… so I decided to stick to the plans and do it on my own, “the local way”. The local way to amphawa is to do the train route to Maekhlong (where the railway market is, that I blogged about before) and from there take the bus to Amphawa and spend the night in town because of two reasons: Amphawa has a night time floating market and second, it has a ... read more