Adventures (and Misadventures) in Sawadee Land (Part 3 of 4)

Day 3: A Huge Market, Authentic Thai Massage and Bangkok Flood

We separated into two groups today coz some of us wanted to go to church first. Since I'm not a Catholic, I went with the other group. We started out late since we're to go straight to Chatuchak Market - only open on the weekends (To go here, ride the BTS to Mo Chit station and then walk from there. Don't forget to drop by the tourism information office to get a map of the market coz this market is really huge and you could easily get lost here. Another thing, it's forbidden to smoke anywhere inside the market except the smoking stations or you'll get fined 2000baht). If you went to Thailand for some food trip and shopping, you won't be disappointed.

Looks spicy to me

These are small, quail eggs maybe?

Bargains abound from handicrafts, souvenirs, used and new clothes, anything you can think of. The pack of chopsticks that we found at the souvenir shop at the handicraft store costs 180baht but can be had for 60baht here. There's also this cute salt and pepper shaker that I saw at Patpong Market that sells for 450baht. I found a smaller version here for only 20baht. One more good find is a handicraft stall that sells handmade genuine leather bags for only 2800baht (stall owner says that each goes for 20000yen in Japan). The leather was so soft and doesn't smell and at that price we thought it was a good bargain. We didn't have that much cash though. We bought lots of goodies to take back home (chopsticks, magnets, spicy tamarind, dried seafood). By then we were too tired to check out the clothes section, though from the outside all we can see are army clothes, so nothing interesting there.

We sat down to eat lunch at one of the restaurants on the far side of the market and had coconut ice cream for dessert - this one is a must try for only 25baht!

Oooh, yummy! A scoop of ice cream in a coconut shell, surrounded by coconut shavings and topped with peanuts.

We weren't able to meet our friends here coz as I told you the market is REALLY HUGE! We decided to go back to the hotel to drop our stuff and have some massage before heading out to Suan Lum Night Bazaar. There's a little spa just outside our hotel, so we decided to have our massage there. Foot massage goes for 200baht, same for thai massage. As it turns out, the foot massage comes with reflexology and head and back massage, pretty cheap huh? (But if you're going to Wat Pho, there's a massage school there that you can try instead. We weren't able to drop by there coz we're already quite saturated with the temples.)

Feeling refreshed after the massage we headed out to Siam paragon and MBK (their version of Greenhills) for some dinner and a little more shopping. If you're going to buy spicy tamarind and dried fruits to take home, just buy it at MBK rather than in Chatuchak - it costs the same and there are more choices here. Must try are dried kiwi, dried cherries, preserved santol and tamarind candies. We also dropped by the clothing section to buy fisherman pants (the shorter version at 99baht each, the longer one at 199baht).

Then we went to Suan Lum. From Siam station we must ride the MRT to go there. This part of our adventure was full of laughter (and stupidity) coz we don't know how to work the MRT.

"Uhh, so how do we know which one says Lumphini?"" Let's just compare the characters!"" Great idea! (compares characters...) So this is Lumphini, right?"" Oh wait! there's an English button at the top! hahaha..."

But anyway, we were able to reach the bazaar fine, good for us! If Chatuchak is like Divisoria, this one is more like Tiendesitas. The stuff sold here are mostly clothes which are better than those in Chatuchak or in MBK. They give pretty good discounts here too or maybe because the items are priced a little bit higher than in the other two. Since it was nighttime, the air is a little bit cooler and the shopping more fun - or so it should have been. Unfortunately, just a few minutes after we were inside, it began to rain - HARD! The stalls are starting to get flooded and we were stuck inside. After a while, with the rain showing no signs of stopping and fearing that the flooding will get worse, we decided to brave the flood in the stalls so that we could go home already. Unfortunately, the flood was even deeper outside (what was I thinking, of course it will be deeper outside! smack!). Needless to say, we waded our way through the murky waters just to get to the safety of the MRT and from there headed to our hotel. Oh well, I guess we had too much luck on the earlier part of the day.

Only one more day to go and tomorrow we'll be going to a theme park, yay!

Sorry, not much pics here coz I didn't bring my camera only my cam phone so excuse the photos. ;p