No beer for you.

Friday 12^th Feb 2016.

An interesting discovery was made yesterday on the way back from Chinatown. Trevor stopped in at the 7/11 to buy some beers but because it was before 5pm, he wasn’t allowed to purchase. He thought the shop attendant was telling him that a sale started at 5pm but Trevor said he’d just pay full price because he didn’t want to wait. No beer for you!! 

Oh, and another stupid thing that’s happened. I took ages to get logged on to My. Own. Laptop. Seems Mr Google decided that because I was logging in from ‘a different place’ that maybe my laptop had been stolen and I had to jump thru hoops, including copy and pasting the instructions, that were now in Thai, into a translator app so I knew what the hell was being asked of me. Good one Google! Your computer may have been stolen and taken to Thailand, so we’ll make everything appear in Thai to help the thieves out! FFS!! It’s my laptop, so keep it in English please!! Even today when I logged in, yep, you guessed it, it’s in Thai!!  

There’s a longtail boat ride around the khlongs (canals) over the other side of the river. See the ‘old’ Bangkok. Choice of one hour or two hour rides. We’d seen these boats hurtling up and down the river and thought it looked like fun, in a death wish sort of way. We are wearing a track down to the river, the third day in a row we’ve headed there first thing. We reckon we’re decent sort of hagglers, but there was no deal to be done with the ticket seller. 1200 baht, 2 people, one hour, you pay more tomorrow, Saturday. Ok, take our baht. Looks like we’re the only 2 people on the boat but at the last minute a nice English lady jumps on and says hello. She sits 2 rows forward of us, good for our photos not so good for her backside as we pound into the chop in the Chao Praya river to get to the entrance to the khlong. This takes 10 minutes, then we have to sit for another 10 minutes for enough boats to be in the lock to make it worth their while to operate it. We have to go down, which makes me worry for the people who live over here in times of storms, it seems the area could be inundated fairly quickly, but I guess that’s what the lock, or ‘water-gates’ are for. Protection. 

It’s not possible to see directly forward from our seats, or any seats except the driver, so we never know what we’re slowing down for. Sometimes it’s a bend in the khlong, sometimes (twice) it’s an opportunity for souvenir shopping. Very friendly ladies paddle out to us with all manner of goods and the English lady buys a pretty fan after much debate, a beer for Trevor and another for the driver. At the second opportunity, she buys a bottle of water.
 

We had a bit of a chat while we were waiting in the lock, it was the quietest time of the trip. Turns out she lives near Hampton Court Palace, what a nice part of England to live. She wanted to get off the boat at the ferry stop for Chinatown, thinking it would be a Western version of a Chinatown and when we told her what we found yesterday, she decided against it and got dropped off at her friend’s accommodation on the river. There are some amazingly nice looking hotels along the river, not sure how great a river view room would be though, with all these noisy boats buzzing past all day, spewing out their diesel fumes!

so close to the crazy bedlam of Bangkok

In stark contrast to the living standards we saw along the khlongs, we spent the afternoon at MBK, a massive shopping centre attached to the Pathumwan Princess Hotel, where we are meeting up with the wedding party tomorrow night for dinner. We had a very late lunch at a Vietnamese place on the 7^th floor, not bad food, not great, but it filled the hole. 

Asiatique night market is on the radar for tonight. Built in old warehouses and waterfront properties that were home to the East Asiatic Company in the early 1900s. This was a trading business established by Danish national Hans Nille Anderson, who specialised in the export of timber from the region’s lush forests. Another trip down to the river and a free shuttle boat to the market. Reality check- the information I had about the Asiatique markets was “Asiatique is currently the most popular night market in Bangkok, attracting both locals and tourists. It’s like a night version of Chatuchak Weekend Market but much more spacious, airy and beautiful, making shopping here a breeze. If you want to avoid the jams, take the free shuttle boat from BTS Saphan Taksin. You can take this chance to experience taking a boat along the Chao Phraya River too!” So, the translation of that little speil is “if you’re going, go early, they open at 4pm. It is guaranteed that everyone else who uses TripAdvisor has read this and will also be taking the shuttle boat and naturally, the skytrain to the river.” 

We have never seen so many people at a train station, except on tv, where you see the people pushers at the train stations in Japan. We had no chance of getting on the first train that pulled in and only just managed to squeeze ourselves into the next one. And if this was your first time going to the river, have no fear, this heaving mass of humanity knows which way to go! 

The line that awaited us at the shuttle ferry was another episode in the series The Life of Q. I swear it had a life of it’s own! We assessed the situation, judged how long our wait may be, and joined on the end. We got on the 4^th shuttle boat that pulled in at the pier, about an hour’s wait. But back to the Life of Q. A boat had just departed and so Q had to move and catch up to itself, so at first, we moved quite a reasonable distant in a short time. This happened every time a boat pulled in and took a load. Q snaked around and around the space given to it and those less hardy souls bailed. There were other souls, those who had an opportunistic streak, who were prepared to poke the sleeping giant and try to cut in ahead of others at a turning point where the Q came close to itself. As some unfortunate souls tried with the people in front of us. Mamma wasn’t having any of it! I don’t know what she said, or if she was speaking the same language, but I think the tone and volume gave it away and she was understood. The guilty party slinked back to their place. I reached forward and patted her on the back. Ah, the memories, just like at Versailles………….. except it was Trevor doing the ousting. So 3 boats come and go while we wait, with Q edging us forward each time until we were nearly at the head of the beast. And again, opportunity knocks!! 2 short fat little ladies try it on and Mumma gives them another spray but these ones are bolder and only slink back behind us. I turn to the young girls who were behind us and pulled them forward. We all got on the same boat anyway, but don’t poke Q!

old map

Sadly to say, the Asiatique markets were far from our cup of tea. Very modern and sterile, a bit like a market version of MBK, so we found a place to eat because we were absolutely starving by this time, 2 hours after we left the hotel. And FYI, anyone who says Asiatique night markets is anything remotely like Chatuchuk markets either needs glasses or a psych examination! A much shorter wait for the boat to return us to Central Pier for the short train ride home and into bed for the intrepid explorers. 


P.S. Blogger log in still in Thai! 
P.P.S. We don't really like Bangkok. It's official. You can probably tell from the tone of these posts. Let's hope it gets better!