Today being the last day of our holiday in Thailand, the decision was to go on the Floating Market tour.
About 2 hours drive from Bangkok city, we had a great time talking to Black. He told us of his wife who was a government servant working in Immigration Department. He told us tales of under-counter money and big meals and banquets to get things done.
He also told us of his 2 daughters who were very smart and excelled in their studies. Obviously he was a father who doted on his girls. Sometimes they would ask him for money and he would have to borrow to give it to them. I was surprised that he spoke of all these nonchalantly as though it was a fact of life for him and his wife.
He also told us that he was a yellow shirt supporter. He supported the king and the king's daughter. Indeed everywhere we went, we saw photos of the Thai king at his best and most handsome. We could see that the king was much loved by his people.
Anyway, he was good tour guide and driver. He took us to the floating market. We paid 1,200 baht for a long boat that which took us into the narrow alleyways of water flanked by wooden houses built on the water. At first, it looked like a residential area as we saw houses after houses.
Slowly we saw long boats containing all kinds of wares - food, mango and sticky rice, souvenirs, vegetables, fruits, bags, traditional Thai handicraft ahead of us. The boat owners would shout out their wares to us and some of them will use long sticks to put our boats toward them.
We bought a coconut drink, Thai fridge magnets, mangoes, Thai pancakes from some of the vendors. Other than long boats, wooden stalls stood out invitingly along river banks with its sellers calling out to us to stop and climb up small steps to view their wares.
Somewhere along the long winding river, there was a place for our boats to stop and for us to mount the steps for food and drinks.
I was particularly fascinated by an open air art gallery of beautiful paintings along the river. The paintings were world class and really beautiful.
We made our way to the end of the river and back again and I took many photos with my handphone because I had never seen anything like this floating market before.
Other than Asiatique, this place gets my vote as one of the must visit places in Bangkok!
After this interesting trip, we went to Mahachai for lunch. Mahachai is a big market with aquariums of all over the place. Fishes, crabs, prawns were swimming in the big tanks. All we had to do was to select the fresh seafood and ask the restaurant to cook the fish or prawns for us in the manner of style that we want.
We had barbequed prawns, butter crabs and steamed fish Thai styled. Very delicious.
It was here that I bought some satay fish, anchovies and cuttlefish. After eating them I later realized that the Malaysian version was better tasting.
Tim asked Black to take us to Central Embassy, a high class shopping place in town. This place was like Pavillion but more high class selling all the top branded items. We had ice-cream at one of the quaint little shops.
After Central Embassy, Black took us for chicken rice at Pratunam. We had to queue to get seats. However I was disappointed as the chicken was hard and not as soft or silky as the chicken back home. The rice was just passable.
From Pratunam, Black took us on our last ride in Bangkok - to the airport!
It was time for us to say goodbye to Bangkok!
No comments:
Post a Comment