Saschas World

If one would feel like learning Thai one could start here:

http://www.learningthai.com/useful_phrases.html

Sadly it can be very dangerous trying to speak Thai because just as in the Chinese language one word can have entirely different meanings depending on the pronounciation…

In total, there are 5 tones: Mid tone, high tone, low tone, rising tone and falling tone and these tones can be applied to individual characters not just whole words.

One of the difficult words I know of is “mai” which I thought simply meant “no” or “not” but if you get the pronounciation wrong it could also mean “wood”, “silk”, “burn” or “new”… Tricky!

I know Rose told me a good chinese example that was much more exciting.. care to share it here Rose or is it too rude? 🙂

(A MailBlog – This Blog was posted via email to this site. Usually this means the post arrives a day or so late and timestamps completely are knackered 😉

Hostel
Moved to a Big John’s Hostel today. It’s still in Sukhumvit and nearish the last hotel, about 15-20 mins walk.

Tiny Boxroom, no window, room fits a bed and a shelve but nothing else 😉

Lock on door is very flimsy and I can’t fit a padlock so not very safe (they have safety deposit boxes for valuables though). Room is close to a busy area with Pool Table *bother*. I will need those ear plugs tonight no doubt;-) Mind you a sign said no pool after midnight so we shall see..

Also met a guy whom I believe to be Big John himself and he was rather unfriendly so it didn’t make me want to stay there pretty much from the beginning.

Well at least I have an excuse now to put more effort into looking up details about Ko Samui Island.

Chatuchak Weekend Market:
Apart from that I went to the Chatuchak Weekend Market today.
Took the Sky Train to Mo Chit and walked up to the market which is just a few minutes away from the Sky Train Station.
The market itself is apparently only open Say/Sun though having walked around there it looks like many of the shops/stalls are more permanently installed. I doubt they move everything at the end of the weekend.

Chatuchak Market is a big place with overall about 9000 stalls selling everyting from Clothes, Shoes & Cheap Accessories, Bags, all sorts of Knick-Knacks, Furniture & Antiques and general Household Goods to a wide range of small animals including lots of tropical fish in particular. Tropical Fish (not the eating type) seems to be a big thing here as a huge part of the market was just for that.

Of course there were plenty of food stalls everywhere too. Throughout the day I had some spicy thai noodles for 15p (about 22 cents) which were rather nice, sampled crispy pork (chinese style pork) for an expensive 40p (60 cents) and had a quater of a big pinapple at some point for 25p (37 cents).

The market itself was much more pleasant to walk than Chinatown though it was quite warm today.
The lack cars, mopets and their exhaust fumes was a big bonus and the fact that the whole area was just stalls, stalls, stalls was great for browsing. The market was jam packed but still not as busy as Chinatown though somehow I have to say Chinatown was probably a little bit more exciting. Maybe because of the little “adventure” of navigating through the Maze out there 😉

Took some pictures over the last few days though I have to say there are more than one occasion where I didn’t dare taking out my camera.. I might get more used to it eventualy.

I need to figure out how to easily downsize my pictures so I can post them here.
Hopefully I will have that figured out soon so watch this space..

Merry Xmas Everyone 🙂

Nope – it’s doesn’t feel christmas like here in Bangkok.
Some shopping malls play xmas tunes but that’s about it. Apart from the strangely out of place xmas shop in chinatown there is not much about xmas in Bangkok.

Never mind I took out my two nieces pictures that they gave me before I left and put them up in my hotel room.
The one at the top with the Angels is from Dana and the colourful one at the bottom is from Lea. (OK Lea’s picture is more about the sea and sunset and all but this is just what it’s like on Christmas Eve on an Island in Thailand 🙂

Not sure what to do tonight but I passed a Cabaret Theatre today and might have a look what that’s on later.
They might have a special christmas show on 🙂

Took it easy today after having been to Chinatown yesterday.
I had to move out of my Hotel and on to a new place which took the morning.
Sawadee Sukhumvit Inn is the cheapest Hotel I could find at HotelClub (12 pounds) near Thong Lo Skytrain Station. It’s not much more than a Hostel but apparently quite OK so I though I try it for a few days. It’s further away from the center but still pretty much close to the Sky Train so it does not matter. Just a few stops further down from before. I will stay there for 2 days only (fully booked afterwards) and the move on to a Youth Hostel also in the Area.

I am still looking into going to Koh Samui but this will probably now (sadly) be after Xmas, I don’t seem to find the time (or rather want to spend too much time in the internet cafe;-) to organise this. Also I have not been able to check on the weather/flood situation in Koh Samui/Koh Tao yet.

On another note I went to see an old traditional Thai Teakwood House, the Kamthieng House Museum. It was rather nice and tranquil there. No buzzing cars, hectic people.. just some interesting Thai History, Buildings and Artefacts of 19th Century Traditional Lanna people and their way of living.

It was just off Sukhumvit Road near Asoke Station so fairly close to where I am and although the Guide Book said it was “nothing too exciting” I still thoroughly enjoyed getting away from the hectic Bangkok and visit this outdoor museum.

After that I walked down to another larger Park nearby called Banjakiti Park and spent a few hours there. Nice big (though artificial) lake, a few fountains, boats and as usual quite a few joggers in that park too. Takes maybe 45 mins to walk around the lake so it’s relatively big.

It was a nice day as well. Sofar it has be warm but not really sunny though today the sun was out all day. I reckon about 28 C. Perfect for a walk in the park 🙂 It’s amazing how extreme the difference is, one moment you are walking on a busy, smelly, buzzing road – the next moment you are in the middle of a pleasantly quiet, green Oasis with Trees, Flowers, Birds and some fish in the lake too 🙂 I reckon I will spend half my time sightseeing and the other half relaxing in Parks while in Bangkok..

Madness, 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.

Source: www.amazing-thailand.com

It seems like Jetlag has caught up with me (despite Melatonex).
I was ok yesterday but then I did not get up until late morning. Today I tried to get up at 8am and whilst I managed to do so I did not get much done today. I felt like a dead man walkin.. I was completely knackered and only made it as far as Benjasiri Park.

Plan was to read up on touristy things to do in Bangkok, then deciding what to do with the rest of the day… Whilst I did just that (I walked around the park a bit before grabbing a bank to sit on and read) I soon became more and more tired. I seriously tried to fight it off but soon had to followed the locals examle and stretched out on the bench to get more “comfortable”! Needless to say I closed my eyes on more than on occasion 😉

Well I kept hanging out there until around 1pm. I didn’t feel much better and was struggling to get my energy back. Eventually I picked myself up with best intentions to go to Chinatown. Quickly pop back into the hotel room to get myself ready… well.. the bed weas too tempting and thus I let chinatown be for another day.

I only made it back out for Dinner around 6pm and then wandered around the area to look at all the street stalls before heading back to get some more rest.

One wasted day.. but then.. I guess I’m not in a hurry so what the heck, sleeping sounds just fine 😀

Rose’s Cranberry Sauce:
Boil the berries in sugar and water for 10mins – even easier than jam
So how much sugar and water with how many berries then?
Let me know..

After I arrived in Bangkok I was pretty knackered and I took my ime in the hotel to unpack a few things, have a shower and read a bit.

Eventually I went out for a walk, it was about 17:00 by then. As I was walking along Sukhumvit Road (the main road near the hotel) I noticed a park called Benjasiri Park. I decided to go in because there was a group of people practising Tai Chi near the entrance. At least I think it was Tai Chi. Some (dare I say chinese) music played and an istructor whoed the moves. It was quite nice to watch and rather relaxing so I sat down on a bench nearby and watched for a while.

Whilst looking around I noticed plenty of people excersising in the park. In particlar a lot of people running (jogging).

As I was sitting there watching the Tai Chi something strange happened.
A bell sounded and an everybody froze right away. The Tai Chi people stopped doing what they were doing, the joggers stopped right where they were at the time, folks that sat on benched stood up. The whole park looked like someone stopped time, nobody moved! Then some music was broadcast and I figured that this must be the national hymn. I decided I better stand up as well and felt rather silly standing there… The whole thing was very curious! I wonder if this happens
every evening (I will soon find out).

Well after everybody started moving again I left the park and kept walking. After a while I decided to look for a place to eat. I found a popular street restaurant in a little side road and decided to sit down. Easy enough to order since the menu had englisch translations and also pictures.
I didn’t want anything fancy so I ordered some Fried Rice with Prawns and some steamed vegetable with Oyster Sauce. The vegetables were called Morning Glory and looked interesting on the picture (thin dark green leafy veg). The rice was tasty but had more than prawns in it.. looked more like a fried rice with prawns, crabmeat and chicken. The veg were great hough the oyster sauce was not what I expected. It was rather hot (spicy) and the veg had lots of little whole red chilis mixed in. Of course plenty of garlic.. decided to leave the whole gloves on the plate 😉

Including drinks I paid 135 baht (maybe 2 pounds, 3 euros).

As I just about finished my meal an Elephant walked by my table. Seriously! It actually stopped and had a snack. Some guy was going around selling little bags of food to people so they could feed theElephant. A little girl did have fun doing this right in front of my table (no it was not smelly and did not put me off my meal 🙂

Not bad a few hours in Thailand 🙂