After the quiet of Laos, Bangkok was a bit of a shock!
We arrived in the middle of rush hour (well, hours) so it took us over an hour to get from the airport to the hotel, The Matria, a newish place off Sukhumvit. After checking in, we went for a wander of the streets to get acclimatised to Bangkok: traffic, traffic and traffic!
Our street, Soi 18, has about 6 massage places, at least two laundries, three or four other hotels and restaurants, and at least three 7/11s. Plus a goodly number of street vendors selling juices, meat-onna-stick, soup etc up near the Sukhumvit intersection, depending on the day. This makes for a great gauntlet to run when wandering out on excursions — everything from “Massage?” to “Tuk tuk?”
Our first full day we spent quite slowly. We took the BTS (Skytrain) to MBK centre to R could have a look at laptops… of which there were about three. But if you wanted a smartphone, a secondhand smartphone, a new smartphone screen, or a smartphone case, you had about 2000 to choose from. So we left MBK empty-handed apart from a few snacks we’d picked up from the supermarket on the ground floor.
GF waffle
On our way back to the hotel, we detoured to visit an allergy-free cafe a few BTS stops from us, which did a lot of vegan, gluten free, dairy free things. We each had a waffle for lunch… delicious!
We finished this excursion with a foot massage and relaxed before heading out with the intention of hitting the Chinatown night food market.
We grabbed a taxi whose driver said he’d take us there for 150B… then he hit the traffic, and started muttering and thumping the steering wheel. Then he started twitching and sighing and trying to up the price. Then he muttered more and pulled down a side street to cut through the traffic and put the meter on (should have done that at the beginning, buddy, and we’d have been fine!) Then after about 20 mins of our driver muttering and thumping the wheel and moving about 100m, he told us to get out of the taxi if we wouldn’t pay more. We decided we’d prefer to get out rather than negotiate traffic with him! So we got some street food from our corner and explored the neighbourhood a bit more.
R eating brekky at the Chatuchak market
Day 2 was Day of the Markets. We started off at Chatuchak (supposed to be the biggest market in the world, and it feels like it!) We didn’t buy much: a couple of the little fairy light systems and some breakfast, pretty much. R found a secondhand music shop which had a bunch of 90s indie stuff, so was pretty happy.
Markets
In the afternoon, I felt a hankering for fabric shopping, so tried our luck at Sampeng Lane. After wandering the laneways for a while (amongst thousands of other people doing the same thing) we got to the part I wanted, but the fabric shops that were still open didn’t have much that tickled my fancy. I did find a sequin shop though, and indulged my magpie tendencies with a couple of packs of paillettes.
While looking for China World, which was supposed to be more fabric, we accidentally went into Mega Mart, which was a huge number of toy shops, with a few other shops crammed in between. I’m not sure if it was because toyshops on Christmas Eve are a bad idea anywhere, but there were even more people crammed into that place even than Sampeng! Eek! When we finally found China World, it was a welcome oasis of calm, but since they were closing we headed back to Yeowarat Road to await the arrival of the food carts.
Fooooood
And food carts there were! (as soon as dusk hit, that is)
Chinatown street food
We nibbled on sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, pad thai, meat-onna-stick, dumplings, and passed by fruit vendors, juicers, soup makers of every description, seafood vendors, noodle vans… good thing we had a longish walk to the MRT to get home, because we nibbled very successfully!
On our third day, we visited Terminal 21, a mall near our hotel. Each floor is themed with a destination, and it culminates with a miniature Golden Gate Bridge on the top of the atrium. Wow! Again, we didn’t buy much, but we perused the food hall in the basement with much interest. A lot of various themed foods, so R tried a Giant Squid for brekky (it ended up being just a big basket of fried squid pieces, but there you go) and I had a frozen yoghurt. Delish.
We also tried our third massage place (the Ayutthaya Massage) near the hotel, and had probably the best massage of the trip so far. Very relaxing.
Christmas Night we spent on a dinner cruise on the river… along with what seemed like most of the tourist population of Bangkok! After a lot of waiting around, we finally boarded at just after 8, and had a buffet dinner and a show with singers and then a cabaret show. The “ladies” did a great job — it was tricky to tell whether they were ladies or not!
Two Weeks Away 