Chiang Mai was a pleasant vacation to end the trip. Besides reading poolside and my one bike ride, I also attended a cooking class one day. Both the ingredients and the techniques are quite different, and in the class, you have to make your own curry paste with a mortar and pestle.
On my last night in Chiang Mai, I had dinner with Mike and Barbara Ullman and their friends who live here. Another small world story.
Then it was on to Bangkok for my final three days. On Sunday I went to the huge weekend market in the morning, and then did a bike tour. Although Bangkok is a huge city, there are back alleyways, canals, and paths everywhere. We rode through the back alleys of Chinatown (the second largest in the world after San Francisco) and then took a canal boat ride followed by more biking along the canals.
On Monday I visited the Royal Palace and several temples and pagodas. I took one more picture of me with the (born on) Monday Buddha. I have learned on this trip that you can never have too many buddhas.
Bangkok is known for its street food, but it was too daunting for me. There are street restaurants and kiosks everywhere, but I can't tell what most of the foods are, much less how to eat them. So this morning I signed up for a street food tour. I was the only one on the tour, so I have a wonderful guide all to myself, and I stopped at every kiosk to ask her what the unidentifiable foods were. All I can say is ... they eat a lot of strange foods here. I'm sorry I didn't take this tour first so I could have tried more foods on my own. She also told me where the best pad thai in Bangkok is, so on my last night here, that is what I had for dinner.
I visited one museum in the afternoon and then decided to walk to the pad thai restaurant. I can't understand anything that is being said, but I think I found the demonstrations. I saw tent cities in a few locations, a parade of protesters, and some speakers. I think the demonstrations are an ongoing thing, so no one seems to be very worked up about them.
In Bangkok, I was hot and uncomfortable. Since I have a really high tolerance for heat, I think it must be really miserable here.
I am flying out tonight at midnight, so this may be my last post. I have an eleven hour layover in Tokyo tomorrow and hope to spend half the day sightseeing, but I'll be home before I could post anything, so that seems a bit silly. At least the weather in Tokyo is cooperating; it is not freezing cold. Now I just have to see if I can get out of the airport, change money, get into the city, not get lost, and get back to the airport.
And that's it for Southeast Asia 2013 - 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment