Mark Smalley

Thursday, 3 Mar - Bangkok
Leaving a bag of laundry at the guesthouse, we're off to the river again, taking a trip up North to Nonthanburi. It takes about an hour to get there and costs just 10B each, this must be one of the greatest bargains in town. We've been up and down the river before and this is about 2-3 times as far as the city trips. It's a bit greener when you get out a bit. Nonthanburi only gets half an hour of our attention, it wasn't really our destination, just a point where the boat stops. We walk up and down the main street, looking at the stalls. On the trip back we get out a Chinatown and after getting lost (not many English subtitles on the street signs) we take a couple of stools at a communal table at an open air stall in the Talat Kao market. Our roast duck, noodles and rice is dished up immediately and it's good. With a couple of bottles of water it comes to all of 110B.
We take another boat a couple of stops further and walk around the shops in River City. I chat to a guy in a clothes shop. He tells me that a good quality shirt - two-ply Egyptian cotton - costs about 1500B. Could also be made to measure, forgot to ask about that. When we get back to the guesthouse at about 1600 our laundry is waiting for us.
Our evening walk takes us past a couple of local massage parlours, which we make a note because we're thinking of having one on our last morning, tomorrow. The first one costs 150B an hour, the second - the clearly more up-market Ruen Nuad - 350B, both in Convent road. We take another walk in Lumphini park and then on to Erawan Shrine, a Brahman affaire engulfed in incense smoke and offerings of flowers.
It occurs to us that Bangkok has a large number of guards, security etc and that they're very keen on using whistles, usually to direct the traffic.
Along Ploenchit road to MBK for a meal in the food court and some shopping. An enormous choice of counter specialising in various kinds of food, around twenty. Plenty of Thia of course but also Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Italian. We share a Som Tam salad and have Pad Thai with Prawns as our main course. With two bottles of water it comes to 175B. Our shopping ends at 2100 and the efficient but very cool Skytrain delivers us 5 or 10 min later at our stop, Sala Daeng.
Tallying up what expenses we can still expect, in order to determine how much extra Baht to tap, we conclude that Thailand will be 22000B (440 euro, 88 euro per day) richer when we leave tomorrow.

posted by Mark Smalley @ 4:15 PM