The north, east and south side of Bangkok is pretty well served by the various train lines, even if there are two different systems requiring two different tickets. The west however, where a lot of the tourist attractions are, has nothing - I am not acknowledging the bus, taxi and tuk tuks. The quickest and best option I found was to take a canal boat down the Khlong Saen Saeb canal. It was a little rough but actually pretty fun, cheap and didn't take long. It gets you about half way to the western district before the canal ends at Panfa Leelard (I found it also being called Phan Fa Lilat, the English translations are terrible and inconsistent), but from there it is close enough to walk around to most places.
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| BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS. |
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| Canal boat. |
The closest place was called Golden Mount, sort of a temple place with this golden top. You get to climb up on to the roof and see what's around, which is alright. From Golden Mount I walked down to Yaowarat Road to see what China Town had to offer. Bad idea. The traffic in Bangkok is just horrendous. There is a never ending stream of traffic, few traffic lights and even fewer pedestrian crossings. They appear to have the markings where you have to give way to pedestrians, but they mean nothing at all. If you're on foot you just have to step out into oncoming traffic using your own judgement, and hope for the best. This might sound simple, but when some of these roads are several lanes wide and you've got a high number of crazy motorbikes and tuk tuks darting in and out, it's not so easy. I eventually made it to China Town and started to get an understanding of the road rules, but there wasn't much to see in the markets there. I bought a Fanta from a vendor on the side of the road, hoping I would get transferred into "Bag of Fanta" form, but all I got was a glass bottle :(
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| Golden Mount. |
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| On top of Golden Mount. |
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| Traffic fun. |
As I was leaving China Town I found this underground mall which was amazing, hundreds of stores selling cheap counterfeit (assumedly) video games, mixed in with several stores selling guns and ammunition for some reason - not a good look for the video game industry. I didn't buy anything as I don't have a modified Xbox unfortunately, also no idea what language the games would have been in.
I walked by the Giant Swing next, which was really disappointing because it was pretty big, but looked nothing like any swing I've ever seen - you couldn't even ride it. Just in front of it was this really bizarre car crash, some guy had driven straight through a bunch of pot plants and into a pole. I wasn't sure if it was some kind of weird artwork piece or a real car crash, but it was gone the next day when I came past again, so I guess it was legitimate. I also walked by the Democracy Monument which is set up in the middle of a roundabout the next street over. Down one of the streets I bought this awesome banana pancake from a street vendor, you even get to watch him make it while you wait - and possibly become increasingly horrified by the lack of hygiene (this one seemed alright).
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| Car crash. |
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| Also car crash. |
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| The Giant Swing. |
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| City Hall (maybe). |
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| Democracy Monument. |
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| Banana Pancake. |
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| The finished product. |
I had to do a bit more walking to get up to Wat Benchamabophit (The Marble Temple) next, since I was running a fair bit behind my schedule for the day I didn't purchase a ticket and go inside, but from what I could tell I wasn't missing out on much. The final stop on this side of the city today was Khao San Road, which apparently is popularised in the movie called The Beach (with Leo DeCaprio - it actually was quite a good movie but I don't remember this road specifically). Basically it's a super tourist street, lots of market shops, lots of tailors trying to get you in to buy some suits, some tattoo parlours (so you can remember your Bangkok visit forever!) and of course lots of bars and clubs. The downside of the street is so many tourists, the majority being young white males - not the kind of people I want to be around.
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| Wat Benchamabophit. |
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| Welcome to Khao San Road. |
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| Also Khao San Road. |
Instead of walking all the way back to the canal I tried to get to the ferry pier, which carries much larger boats down the Chao Phraya river, the main river in Bangkok. It was almost impossible to find because there were no signs at all, it's not like thousands of tourists walk this route every day or anything... The ferry was supposed to be express, but was pretty damn slow, also the annoying attendant at the back of the boat kept blowing this loud whistle all the time whenever we were approaching and leaving a pier. I was also a bit surprised to see how much rundown "riverfront property" they had, only at the very end of the route just before getting to Central Pier (where the boat and the train meet up) did some high end real estate start to appear. The quality of the river was about as good as the Yarra River too.
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| Riverfront condo's. |
I made a few stops on the train ride home since I had an all day ticket anyway. First stop was Silom where I stopped in at a McDonalds, I got a McParfait where you get to choose your own toppings (only three), which is like a poor man's self-serve frozen yoghurt, and got some donuts from Mister Donut! I also took a walk through Lumphini Park but it wasn't as good as Chatuchak Park, mostly because they had a bunch of stages setup for some event. There was again a surprising amount of runners out in the park, and I just got out before it was national anthem time again - I'm not sure if traffic has to stop for the national anthem as well...
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| It's the McINeverAskedForCornFlakes. |
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| Mister Donut is back! |
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| Silom. |
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| Lumphini Park. |
I got back on the train at Chit Lom, via the Central Chidlom shopping centre - again no idea why we have "Chidlom" and "Chit Lom". This place had a single department store as the tenant, so out of curiosity I checked out their sports section (some random Adidas shoes were $200 before a generous 20% discount) and their clothing section (boardshorts for like $80). I'm not sure how the average salary in Bangkok compares to Australia, but I can't imagine many locals being able to afford this. I got off the train one last time as Siam Exchange. I took a walk around Siam Square which I had not heard of, but was pleased to find out it was an open air mall situated in the streets behind the train line, such a welcome relief after all of the heavily airconditioned shopping centres I've had to deal with everywhere else. Also, it's pretty hard to stuff up a store directory when you only have a single level and real streets.
I revisited the MBK Centre again for dinner, I didn't go back to the international food hall from yesterday but there was another food square on the second top floor. This one seemed like a total scam though, you have to buy a special card (like a Myki or something) and put upfront credit on it, which is good for one day only. Then you go around to each of the stores and use your prepaid card to buy food, and hope not to run out of money. Once you've finished eating, you need to go and stand in another line to get a refund on any money you have left. I didn't want anything to do with that process so moved along. The other half of the floor was nothing but souvenir shops, all gathered together. While searching around, I found of these two items:
- Any souvenir magnet
- A rare collection of 1980's Nintendo Game & Watch
That's right, not a single magnet to be found in the whole place! I went up one more floor and found a restaurant called Curry Place selling some nice looking curries, which were decent and cheap - the clothes might be crazily overpriced, but the food and drinks are usually great value.
STEP-O-METER: 40616 steps (15 minutes at the fitness centre)
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