#wentraveldays: Thailand - Day 2: Bangkok (12 Dec 2010)

Day 2 after breakfast, we went for a boat cruise on the Chao Phraya River to get to the floating market. We were rather clueless as to where and how to get a boat ticket. We walked past a little shop/office within the BTS station and were being introduced to their package to get us to the Taling Chan Floating Market and Grand Palace. Uncle Sam was our tour guide for this little journey and he was really interesting and nice. Of course we tipped him for being a wonderful guide! =))

Dont the 3 buildings remind you of the MBS in Singapore? =X

How often do we see the super old boat engine in Singapore?/They are very particular about how you board or alight the long-tail boat for safety reasons.

The view of the Grand Palace from Chao Phraya River.

Activities you see happening on the river.

Opening of the gantry to allow the long-tail boats from both directions to give way. It works like a traffic light and Uncle Sam called it "getting out of jail".

it totally feels like you are living in the 1960s to be eating in such an environment. But it feels really good to be laidback in such a place./ I must say that they are very innovative to cook on the boats on the river. Thumbs up for their innovation and food! =D

We bought some food back to eat on our boat, i.e. Big-head prawns, Mango sticky rice and the green bean pastry. I totally love the mango sticky rice and green bean pastry. I used to eat the green pastry locally but to date, i no longer see it being sold anywhere.

Dried goods.

One small portion of the large painting on the wall. Very detailed indeed.

After a long day under the hot sun, we returned to the hotel to wash up and change into something comfortable. Yeap, we had to be in the appropriate attire to enter the Grand Palace. We headed to the famous Chatuchak Weekend Market, near Mo Chit BTS Station. The crowd was crazy and we kinda got lost with the many shop lanes. There are hundreds of shops and basically they sell EVERYTHING there. Just anything that you can think of. By the time we reached there, it was almost 9pm and shops were starting to close. All we did was to hurry and catch as much great deals as we could. =X

Old school pepsi glass bottle. I've always liked the glass bottles more than the current plastic bottles. They just look so classy and attractive but hardly do we find such glass bottles in Singapore anymore.

To satisfy our shop list, we returned to Sala Daeng to buy the things that we had missed out. At the same time, we tried their braised chicken kway tiao with pig's blood. Singapore no longer sells pig's blood now and it was my first time trying at BKK. It really tasted like normal tofu but with more texture. I seriously don't understand why I had been so against trying it in the past. Next up, we went to Coco Walk, just off Rathetewi BTS for drinks. In fact we wanted to try the Korean style BBQ which was recommended on one the forums, at just THB99 (SGD5) per pax. It was said that there is a wide variety of food. But we didnt quite notice this mentioned shop. We settled at one of the pubs for drinks. Cocktail for Lydia, Singha Beer for Nic and Chang Beer for myself. We ordered 2 bottles of beer each and played Hangman. I never liked beer until I tried Chang Beer cos it's by far the lightest that I've tried. It was past 2am when we left. The water heater wasnt working and we had to shower in the freezing cold water late at night. It was pretty shiok though.