41: River Boat & Flower Market
Went down to the big Chao Praya River today and took the Express Boat from Central Pier to Tha Saphan Phut. This is where the Flower and Vegetable Market is. Spend about two hours walking around all the stalls with loads and loads of different vegetables. Looked all very nice and fresh. Lots of veggies I have not seen before, same for fruits but there were more veggies. There were naturally shedloads of fresh Chili in various sizes and buckets full of Garlic, Ginger, Lemongrass and other odd root vegetables. I could smell the fresh soil they were still covered in. Two trucks were just unloading Pinapples.. never seen such big pinapples.. sadly they were for distribution to stalls but I did not see any stall that sold them or I would have bought one. Talking of Garlic again they interestingly don’t sell whole bunches of garlic but individual cloves sorted by size and quality and sold at different prices.
Flower Market was right there next to the Vegetabe Market and they had mostly flowers chained together for their prayers at Budda Temples or Sprit Shrines. I didn’t see too many unusual flowers though and was expecting a big display of Orchid Varieties according to my Guide Book. Maybe I was in the wrong Area.
Afterwards I went a bit up north in that Area to the Indian Market. A whole area devoted to selling electronic DIY thingies (plugs, sockets, cables, screws, electronic parts..) and many stalls seemed to repair old amplifiers, TVs or other electronic devices. Don’t know how they manage because all they seemed to have available was a soldering iron and spare parts. Didn’t see any instruments to investigate a fault so they must just go by luck replacing this and that and see if it works again 🙂
Then on to the Indian Clothes Market. Wanted to look for that famous Thai Silk. Prices were about 5 GBP (7-8 Euros) per square meter for 1-ply thai silk (the thinnest they sell). Strangely that silk was still considerably thicker than my silk sleep sheet that mom got me for my trip (Thank You!! I really need it in the hostels and am glad I have this with me!). I asked if they had any thinner silk than what they call the 1-ply silk and they said no. I reckon the really thin silk is more expensive or maybe a different kind of silk..
Oh and I popped into a Japanese Restaurant at Siam Center on the way back and had some Sushi and Terriyaki Beef. The Sushi pieces were the biggest ones I have ever seen. They were at least twice as big as we are used. I had a 9-piece Sushi Set and was really struggling to eat it all and I still had the Territyaki Beef.. Rather stuffed now;-) Overall the lot set me back a staggering 5 pounds (7.50 Euros). This is the most expensive food I have eaten sofar.
Right this is the last from Bangkok for a while. I will go and pack my stuff now so I can head off to Koh Samui early tomorrow morning. (I send an email blog about this but it does not seem to have hit my blog page yet.. as I said this email blogging seems a bit flaky and sometimes email blogs take a few days to appear)
Tags: Bangkok, Thailand
saschas
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