"You will have problems" the man says. "I don't wish you a journey without problems but the strength to comfront them..."
Day 2 in Bangkok. Been taking care of business in between snack breaks, which is quite a few here with all the street food and food markets around. Right now I am munching on fresh pineapple. Yesterday my friend Pat, also from CT, and I took the 25 bus to Chinatown. The place is spread over several blocks and we spent most of our time in the shoe area. I finally found my pair of wadding boots for the elephant park. Then we wandered over to another area making and selling bean paste pies for the upcoming New Year. We both thought the mini donut size pie was tasty and got a bigger one weighing about 3 pounds to go.
The flower market was just setting up for their night sales and the most popular color was yellow. Lots and lots of marigolds or something like that were being strung together to make wreaths and necklaces.
The water taxi took us up two stops north by the Grand Palace. We walked in this area for about 1 hour until we were really lost but also coming across some other tasty street food. We ended up crying Uncle and took a tuktuk to the Metro stop to take Skytrain back to our part of town. Our feet were screaming and it would have been a perfect time for a foot massage. We plan on doing that today.
We are staying at the Bangkok HI Centre hostel and the female dorm room is the size of a large closet with 3 bunk beds. I arrived about 1:30am to the room and the stale and hot air took me by surprise. This felt like a jail sentence being confined to this small space with no windows and no air. About 3am another prison mate started coughing and hacking and I thought for sure I was going to catch something like TB.
Last night was a better sleep because we figured out how to turn on the AC unit. There was only 4 of us too this time. One toilet of the two is clugged and we hope that gets fixed.
Tomorrow I fly to Chiang Mai.
