Floating Markets, Temples and Crazy Driving

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Trip Start Jun 15, 2011 Previous
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  Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand
Sunday, June 19, 2011

With an early start planned for Saturday we went to bed relatively early but a Friday night on Khao San road isn't supportive of those who want to sleep (How old man does that sound?) Anyway, there was a lot of loud music from midnight until about 2 (fair enough) but then from 2am until about 4.30am there were girls running around our corridor,banging on doors and screaming to each other across the building. By the time the alarm went off at 6.30am, we'd only had about 2 hours sleep so decided to snooze an extra 15 minutes and just skip breakfast. Katy changed the alarm and we went back to sleep but sadly the inevitable had happened and somehow the alarms turned off. Fortunately I woke up in a panic at 6.45 thinking it was 9am which left us with about 20 minutes to get ready before we got picked up for our tour.

The minibus collected us from the hotel and we joined a full group which took us up to see the floating market in Dumnoen Saduak. It was about an hour and a half to the port where we caught a long boat into the Dumnoen Saduak market. Along the way we got to see even more of the fun road conditions in Bangkok. The Thai taxi drivers are very good at making full use of the road and very easily make a 2 lane road into a 3 or even 4 lane road if you include the Tuk Tuks. 

 The taxi drivers are renowned for their scary driving so we expected them to be fairly aggressive drivers but what surprised me was the lack of road safety in general. Not just that you don't have seat belts (Even in South Africa lots of people won't wear seat belts), on the motorway we saw a man on a 50cc scooter with 3 enormous gasoline barrels strapped to the back of him and just 20 metres ahead of him a full family on a similar scooter. Mother and father sat one behind the other, and a really young girl (maybe 6 years old) standing at the front and holding onto the handle bars above her head, none of them wearing helmets whilst it was hammering down with rain. At the same time, our minibus is flying down the motorway, undertaking cars and ducking and diving into the smallest spaces imaginable. About 20 minutes later I saw a lady sat on the back of a scooter fast asleep with no helmet on... mental is the only word to describe it. I found the best thing was just to go to sleep then I could be blissfully unaware of any dangers.

The floating market was odd to say the least, apparently it's the oldest floating market in Thailand and clearly bus loads of us tourists had been ushered in.  There were loads of little stalls and also a few random sinister looking guys holding enormous pythons (and I do mean the snake), not sure what that was about.  About half the stores are only accessible by boat, the others on shore, and then there are a number of sellers, mainly old women, who paddle around selling fruit to the people shopping. Now I've read about the importance of establishing a captive market, but this was ridiculous. As your guide paddles past stores, the retailer has a stick with a hook on the end and could then drag your boat over to look at whatever delights they had... mostly pictures of the market, all forms of elephants, tacky souvenirs and anything you can possibly imagine that could be made out of a coconut. And you are greeted with "which one you want?" hmmmm.... none of it thanks, this didn't go down well and it could be quite a while before your boat is finally released from the grip of the sellers hook. Surprisingly, the boats used the same tactics as the taxis, pushing through any possible tiny gap which inevitably led to about 100 boats getting stuck in the middle going nowhere and choking on the fumes from the powered boats. It was brilliant! I loved the fact that they run this market every single day and still can't actually make it work. However, when you look at it, it actually did work and very well. The tactic is make every tourist so fed-up and hot that they will buy something in the end. Our boat wasn't intending on buying anything but by the end we were all drinking from coconuts and asking the price of their mango with sticky rice. I've concluded that actually they are seasoned pro's!

Sunday is the day we leave Bangkok so we got up just in time for breakfast and then packed up our room so that we could check out. We left our bags at the hotel and set off on a walk to see Wat Pho which is about a 15 minute death-defying stroll from Khao San road, and Wat Arun which is just across the river maybe another 15 minutes from Wat Pho. I say death- defying because of the 4 lane (becoming 6 lanes to Thai drivers) road we had to cross to get there. In theory it should be fine because there is a zebra crossing with a pedestrian traffic light,the problem is that these are seen more as guidelines than rules so most of the bikes and a few of the Tuk Tuks are quite happy to drive through a red light and just swerve round the pedestrians. 

 To get to Wat Pho we walked past the Grand Palace again, this time not dressed with long trousers and covered shoes because we hadn't intended on going inside any of the temples and it was the hottest day we have had yet so didn't fancy wearing extra hot clothes. This was of great "concern" to all of the market stall owners and Tuk Tuk drivers and we had several people chasing us down the street: "Sir, long pants, LONG PANTS". Basically the store owners wanted us to rent their long skirt things and the Tuk Tuk drivers wanted to take us to some other delightful tourist attractions where long pants were not a necessity - no doubt their mate's suit shop. Wat Pho was beautiful even though a large portion of it was being renovated, the detail on all the buildings was incredible and the buildings were enormous. A group of Thai girls from a nearby school asked to interview us for their school project and just asked a few simple questions in English. "Sorry sir, but what is your name?, Sorry sir, but where are you from?" etc. This was the sad moment of realising how pathetic it sounds when a young girl asks you what you do for a living and you have to pause and then lie so that the answer isn't "I'm 24 and unemployed". It didn't matter though because they had no idea what I was saying anyway, I could have said I was an Axe murderer and they would have smiled sweetly and read their next question on the list.

We left Wat Pho and then walked over to the port and crossed the river to see Wat Arun which is particularly impressive. From the river it towers above the other buildings and reminds me of Angkor Wat (from what I've seen in photos). We climbed the steps up to about half way and took advantage of the fantastic views over Bangkok. Again, the split between rich and poor was very clear to see as you tend to see either shiny new buildings or shacks. As it was about to rain we decided to head back down and catch a taxi back to Khao San road. The steps on Wat Arun are pretty treacherous and more like a ladder than a set of steps and as Katy had to wear a sarong to cover her offensive ankles it made the climb up and down particularly dodgy for her. I'm happy to report that my ankles are not offensive! Yes!

I have realised that the few days we have spent in Bangkok has completely changed my opinion of the value of money. The river crossing on the boat was 3 baht each (6p), a main course in a restaurant is about 80 baht (£1.60), and I realised that this had changed me when getting our taxi back. The fair was 45 baht and I gave the guy 100, he gave me 40 back and then paused a moment before giving me the 10 (expecting a 15 baht tip), that's over 30% tip...unbelievable, the greedy bugger! I felt perfectly within my rights to give him a very generous 5 baht tip which is more than 10%............but that's about 10p oops - I'm clearly my granddads grandson - tight (I won't say which granddad to avoid getting in trouble)!

Anyway, enough of my ramblings. We are now sat on a sleeper train heading for Chiang Mai looking forward to some trekking, elephants and hopefully exciting times. We are sharing our carriage with an old Australian man and his wife - pretty sure it's one of those Thai bride situations. Bangkok has been a weird experience, it's chaotic and dirty but also exciting, vibrant and beautiful. We're looking forward to seeing what the rest of Thailand has to offer.

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Sean at Wat Arun	Katy at Wat Pho	The two of us on a longboat	Katy at the market outside Wat Pho   Comments!
Crazy boating	Oldest seller ever

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