Bangkok, Day 1

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Philip and I arrived in Thailand together, which wouldn't be so incredible if I hadn't been flying standby for each leg of the trip. Weary and jet lagged , we arrived late Wednesday night into Bangkok, with only the energy to walk around our neighborhood and eat a bowl of noodles before heading to bed.

Rather than begin with our day on Thursday, I'm first going to tell you how it ends, so that any of the medical buffs out there might conjure a guess to what left me itchy, bumpy, and slightly swollen at 10 pm at night. Of course, as I was recounting WFR trainings, systemic reactions, and anaphylaxis, I was envisioning only the worst. However, my calm minded husband suggested we head to the local pharmacy to find an antihistamine. Although Benadryl was unavilailable, we did find an antihistamine that seemed to do the trick.

That leads me to what we did, or rather to what street food we ate yesterday. We decided to take the local bus and weave among car, scooter, bike, and pedestrian traffic to the China town market, to gawk, smell, feel, and listen to the busy market place. We began our day with our new favorite, the Thai noodle bowls. As we wondered the different sections of the vast market, from lawn mower motors, to rope, to shoes, to metal products, we nibbled on sticky rice with banana, fresh pineapple, fried pork product, and skewered meats, while washing it down with fresh pomegranate juice and an air conditioned latte (this we paid western prices for, but I'm pretty sure the AC was worth it).

We topped it all off with dinner, an assortment of cabbage, mussels, crabs, chicken feet (I was not brave enough to partake in this one), and rice. I nibbled on Phil's 'desert' which consisted of pickled and jellied vegetables, which was somehow kind of sweet. Check out the pics. Today we're trying to get out of the city to visit a floating market about 70 km from town. Apparently it only takes a bus, train, and boat to get there. . .

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Photos

Street food
Philip getting a sense of what he will taste next.

Chicken feet!
Mmmm. Kind of.

Dessert.
Pickled and Fermented Goodness.

Comments

[guin]

hey, hey
I love hearing about all the different modes of transportation and eating options. You are a great writer, I could picture the whole scene. Especially, the foot massage- I hope you are getting lots of other amazing $3 massages. I think I got one everyday that I was there.