34: Golden Budda & Smelly(China)town
Thursday, December 22nd, 2005Madness, Madness, Madness !!!
I can’t say it enough! Chinatown is complete Madness!
I took the MRT (Subway) to Hua Lampong Train Station (see MRT map) and then did a little walk towards Chinatown.
I initially stopped at Wat Traimit which houses the worlds biggest (3m high) solid Golden Budda. If I remember correctly it was made about 700 years ago and to protect it from thiefs it was covered in stucco (plaster of some sort). It appears the disguise was so good that nobody noticed it as a golden buddah until around 1955 when a corner of the plaster chipped off after an accicent when the Budda was moved to Wat Traimit and the crack revealed the gold underneith. I wonder which thief would have been able to snatch a 5 ton Gold Budda though? Not exactly pocket change.. 😉
Anyway after the Budda I planned to visit a few Wats (Little Temples/Monestries) named Wat Mangkon Malalawat, Wat Ga Buang Kim and Wat Chakrawat in Chinatown which are supposed to be worth visiting but miserably failed to locate the last two and even finding the bigger Wat Mangkon was a big struggle due to the incredible madness of narrow alleyways, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE and masses of stalls everywhere.. The lack of road signs or, if signs were present either hidden by stalls or the fact that road names are spelled at random (to the extent that spelling is not only different from the map but the sign on one end of the road might even have spelled differently from the other end) meant I was pretty much lost 🙂
Only when I hit some major roads I would somehow get my bearings but after a few hours of trying to make sense of the roads I gave up and just wandered and wondered in awe about the millions of things that are being sold there.
Actually the area that I walked around mostly was what I though to be the Nakhom Kasem Thief Market but having had nother look at a better map it turns out I wasn’t there so I really just walked around the main Chinatown Market Alleys.
If you find a chinatown map then the route that I took (as far as I could track it) was from Sukhumvia MRT Subway to Hua Lamphong Train Station then walk -> Thanon Trimit -> Wat Taimit -> Chinese Arch -> Soi Wanit 1 (Sampeng Lane) -> (Lots of little Allleyways off Wanit 1) ->Thanon Rajawong -> up north towards Thanon Luang -> Wat Mangkon Kamalawat -> Thanon Songwat -> Thanon Kao Lam -> Hua Lampong Trains Station and MRT back to to Sukhumvit.
Well I have never seen so many people squeezed into so many little alleys at the same time. Don’t Thai work at all??
It was fun and interesting to walk around there but it really was a struggle at times to move forward (or backward for that matter 😉
There are shops left and right of the alleys selling EVERYTHING. Also there are usually about 20 shops next to each other selling the same type of things (i.e several shops selling only shoes, or hats, or bags, or toys,.. even a shop that seemed to sell only xmas things (Thai’s don’t celebrate xmas so I did wonder.. :-). The shops’ goods spill out onto the Alleys and if you’re lucky there is enough space for 2 maybe 3 people to walk next to each other. Of course that sounds not too bad but then there are the mopet delivery drivers that try to squeeze through the crouds with huge piles of boxes (retail stuff, food, waste, anything..) somehow cramped on the back of their ancient vehicles. Often the load was higher then I am tall and that on those little mopets 🙂 And not to forget the food stalls tucked into the remaining little spaces with BBQs, proper kitchen on wheels, fruit stalls and more…
Now you might wonder if it was a bit “smelly” with all those petrol/oil burning mopets.. You bet it was!
But then, the whole Chinatown Area is one big pool of burnt diesel, petrol & oil fumes :-}
It’s hard to describe but at times it was really hard to breath and after a day in this area my eyes were burning, rough throat and I bet breathing there for a day it shaved off at least one year off my life expectancy 😉
On the main roads in Chinatown with cars driving faster the fumes got even worse. Big Clouds of grey fumes everywhere!
Luckily at some point I managed to find a little supermarket where I could breath some fresh air 😉
Still, despite all struggles of navigating Chinatown and finding breathable air it was pretty amazing to walk around there.
I will go back in the next few days since I still need to find that Birds Nest Soup and of course I have yet to explore the Indian Market next to Chinatown and the Flower & Veg Market Pak Klongh Talat nearby 🙂 Maybe this time I take the river boat though rather than squezing though chinatown alleys… The boat stops next to the flower market so that would be handy.
saschas