Bangkok, Thailand
Saturday, January 20, 2007
OK, I've been here 5 months and I've just started to do some of the touristy things. Last month, I finally made it to the Grand Palace when my friends came to town. A friend has been wanting to go on a dinner cruise down the river so I figured why not. The Chao Phraya River is very pretty at night with all the buildings lit up and sparkling. We found a nice looking boat with a decent website. They had a seafood menu and a vegetarian menu that looked very good. So we decided on the sunset cruise at 6pm. Unfortunately, we are in Bangkok and it took us a lot longer to get there than we planned and didn't get down to the pier until 6:20. Luckily, I spotted the boat near the pier and flagged it down just as it was leaving. I talked our way on board even though our reservations weren't received. There was so much food. The menu said that it was a 6 course meal, unfortunately, it was served in only 3 intervals. My seafood meal started out with some sort of fried fishy mashed cubes, then the next 4 courses came at once: a pasty dried (not on purpose) fish, a sweet and sour rubber band, dried fried simulated seafood cakes, Tom Yum Goong, (and when they say goong they mean 1 shrimp, singular) something else I wasn't quite able to figure out or eat and some nice steamed rice. Her vegetarian set was about 5 slightly different versions of tofu and a few vegetables. Desert was some horrible assortment of fruit and fruit-like products. The boat headed back up the river exactly to where we came from on the 13 Baht passenger ferry, turned around half way and headed back to the Sheraton pier. They finished off dinner with a coffee and before we knew it, we were back at the pier and ushered off, but not before being handed a $100 check for the "pleasure" of tasting some of the worst not just Thai food, but worst food in the world. Needless to say, I'll not ever be returning to the Loy Nava Dinner Cruise nor should anyone that reads this. It was actually worse than the food at the reviling restaurant at the top of Baioke Tower (another tourist trap). I guess that's what you get when you do the touristy things in Bangkok. The worst part was that we both got sick from eating the food, even the vegetarian food.
The only really interesting note of the night is when we went to riverside restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental afterwards and saw a bottle of Charles Shaw Chardonnay for 1600B or $45. I had to laugh. I guess most people in Bangkok wouldn't know that Charles Shaw is the famous Two Buck ($2) Chuck from Trader Joes.
Comments
Re: No More Stinkin' Tourist Stuff For You
Ya, Tourist shit is just that. Overpriced shit that only stupid tourists would do b/c the locals are going... Who the... would pay those prices for a stupid cruise up the river for 100 times the price of the river taxi?