i only just arrived yesterday evening and will confess to being nervous when even the taxi driver lost his bearings to the guesthouse and then dropped me off onto a dark, shabby street strangely lit by a 7 Eleven.
of course everything looks different in the morning and i bypass the excellent food at Shanti to strike out for the neighboring wet market in search of breakfast. for 10 baht [36 baht = 1 dollar] i get a crispy fried pancake of tiny whole shrimp with a chili dipping sauce. forgive me if all i end up talking about is the food. almost everywhere one looks is the endless array of food - in every state of existence and form of preparation - from eels endlessly writhing in buckets to mounds of perfectly bagged noodles. for those people who enjoy grazing, Bangkok is your heaven.
adjacent to the wet market across a small klong is a flower market. these orchids would easily show up the ones at the Bronx Botanical gardens. they are the carnations of thailand. i find myself at the mercy of constant comparisons to life in new york. i will take the adorable geckos that find their way into every dwelling over the roaches.
further up the road is Tha Tewet pier where i take the ferry that gets me to downtown/Skytrain. this particular pier is special - its waters having been blessed by the princess. no one may fish here. and the fish get the added benefit of being fed by those as a gesture of good luck. alongside the bags of bread are an assortment of live fish, eels, and turtles. i had assumed they were for eating but they are for release according to the specific blessing that you may need on a given day. i wish i could read the gorgeous whorls of written Thai that offer an explanation as to which animal confers which blessing. might release some turtles just because.
