This morning we wanted to try some crepes at a restaurant that we saw last night. We get there and them get told “we no have”. Umm maybe they meant it’s not a morning thing. Ok fine we’ll settle for the pancakes. I ordered the banana and home and my wife wanted the mixed (meaning pineapple and banana) . They said they “no have”. Huh? Eventually we learned they don’t have any pineapple. Ok then we settled for just banana and honey. It was ok.
As for coffee, they make it rather strong. It took quite a bit of sugar and milk to make it palatable. I was hoping it was just the Indian restaurant that made it strong. Ah well.
We walked around our area looking for souvenirs to buy for other people. Once you understand the conversion rate you begin to realize just how much they are ripping you off for given the prices of things like food and taxis (to some degree, even they think they are making a killing when you rent a taxi for your person limousine service for an hour and only pay about $10).
Here, like any other tourist trap, vendors hawk their stuff and many of them are quite militant/insistent on you buying something. Especially the guys selling custom suits. I’ve seen tailored suits being a big thing in Korea but here there is a custom suit shop every 100ft or so. They try everything to get your attention. Not really surprising but is surprising is that they are all run be East Indians or Nepalese people. We met one ethnic Indian Guy who was born here.
It is surprising how many people we have met are, and I believe this is the right term, 3rd culture generation. Basically people who’s origin is of one country but lived the majority of their life in anohr and are now in a 3rd country for work. It would be a quirk if it was only one or two people, but we have met 10 people like that. Its like a whole new culture of “world citizens” that really don’t call any one place home save for the room they are sleeping I’m at the moment. I believe I can honestly say that is what we are rout now. World Citizens.
We get to the “bus” (read oversized minivan) and its filled with Koreans! Talk about funny!
These trips usually encompasses a bunch of stops. The first one is called the Train Market. This is because it is set up on the side of train tracks. Active train tracks. They simply pull back their awnings and food wait for the train to go by and then put everything back again. Video will be here shortly :)
While that was entertaining for all of 10min, it as still just a food market like any other. Fruit, vegetables and fish stuff lined the tables. Not much to see. When you’ve seen one market in a mildly undercivilized country, you’ve seen them all. Just the the ones with fish smell worse than ones that aren’t so seafood rich.
We walked around the immediate area. More market stuff, more trinkets and jewelry to buy. More strange food being sold and no body to tell you what you migth be eating. We played it safe and bought some fried chicken. Well it was at least in the shape of a chicken leg. We opted out for the deep fried food option.
Next we finally got to the floating market area. We arrived at 4pm but weren’t getting in a boat till 6:30pm. This being a Friday, the tourfuide assistant informed us that most shops are closed during weekdays. Great. Well we walked around and there were some shops open to give us an idea of the place.
When we finally did get on the boat it was an enjoyable ride. I originally thought the point of the floating market was that you went out on the boat to shop for other things on boat. At least that’s what some of the pics i saw seem to imply. Nope, not at all.
There are some boats that float over to certain areas and these boats have stuff for sale on them. Veggies, fruit, BBQ meat of some sort (seafood, beef and such) .
We were also told about fireflies. Apparently the Thais think that going on a boat tour to see fireflies is a big deal. Now I will admit that it did Lockhart neat as some trees looked like Christmas trees by how many fireflies there were blinking away. I think the Bret part was simply being in a boat relaxing and chatting with the Koreans behind us.
So once you see these pics, it is safe to ignore this trip if you ever come to Thailand. Unless you do this on a weekend when there will be more stores open and maybe somemore interesting things to see. Or maybe more trinkets that say “I {heart} Thailand “.
A 2hr drive back to hotel and we were done for the day.