The Rest of Bangkok

I loves me some street food.

Jordan is busy getting her second massage of the week so you are stuck with another post from me. This one will be much shorter the the last. I promise.

The rest of our time in Bangkok was somewhat colored by our experience with tailor scam. Everywhere we went, we could see the scam opening up before our eyes. At every attraction there was a crowd of people outside telling you that it was either closed, or that the way to get tickets is just around the corner (this is never true). We got pretty good at ignoring any advice we received from anyone other than a member of the hotel staff. One guy tried to tempt us with the same two temples that we had been sent too the previous day and was a little taken aback to hear that we had already seen them.

We were able to make it through the Grand Palace, Wat Po and the Flower Market on the second day. The Flower Market was the most interesting of the sites to me. I find the Wats ornate and impressive, but I can only see so many. The most bizarre part of the day was that Jordan ran into one of her DTE classmates, Bernadette, on a pier near the river boats. We were getting on and she was off. It's a small world for though who have time and the means to travel, I suppose. In the evening we got a crazy two hours massage. It was nice, but I almost fell asleep it was so long.

Baskets of chilis at the flower market - it's more than just flowers!

The next day we went to tour Jim Thompson's house. Jim Thompson was a US born architect and an officer in the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA) during the second world war. After the war he moved to Thailand and revived the traditional silk industry, eventually making a fortune selling silk to European designers. He then built a traditional teak Thai house in Bangkok. Well, it really more like 4 or 5 houses built together. It was a very interesting tour. I enjoyed the house and Jordan enjoyed all the silk. Many of you will be getting silk gifts from the Jim Thompson company for the holidays. :-)

After the tour we killed some time at an Internet terminal before boarding the overnight train to Chiang Mai. Next post, we push aside our frustrating time in Bangkok and enjoy the slower pace of northern Thailand.