We begin our first full day in Bangkok with a fresh mango shake from a fruit stall at the end of Khao San Road.
There are fruit shake stalls everywhere on Khao San Road because they are quite popular with the farang. “Farang” is the term used by Thais to refer to foreigners or tourists, though we’re still not sure if it’s a term of endearment or not.
With our mango shakes in hand, we begin walking Bangkok.
We walk and we walk and we walk.
We pass many different markets and wats – “wats” is Thai for temple – and eventually find ourselves at the Jim Thompson House & Museum.
Jim Thompson was an American architect who volunteered for the army and was stationed in Thailand, where he fell in love with the country. After his service he returned to Thailand and helped establish Thai silk trading worldwide. His house is interesting because it is composed of six traditional Thai teak buildings that he found in Ayutthaya, the old capital of Thailand. He dismantled the 200 year-old old buildings, transported them to Bangkok and re-assembled them on the current site, while still respecting the customs of the traditional builders. Three of the buildings have been linked to create the house proper and the other three buildings constitute the “out” buildings.
To tour the house and museum you must have a guide and ours is amazing. She’s filled with lots of interesting facts about Jim Thompson and the house, but constantly cracks jokes throughout and takes the piss out of a number of her guests, Eric and myself included. After the tour, she tracks us down and presents us with two origami paper cranes for good luck.
We’re the only two that receive them – I think it is because we laughed at her jokes!
After an educational couple of hours, we head to Little Arabia and the shopping district. Eric is very happy to visit Little Arabia because he finds fresh BBQ’d sausage served on a stick.
After all of our walking, we decide to hop on the sky train to get home. The only problem is the sky train doesn’t connect the entire city, so we take it as far as we can and then walk the rest of the way “home”, stopping to pick up another mango shake before dinner at the local food stalls.
On New Year’s Eve, once again we start our day with a mango shake.
Yes, we know we are forming an addiction but it could be worse.
Eric wants to check out the Thieves Market, so we make our way over by meandering through Chinatown and Little India. Once we’re there, I lose Eric to the multiple doll stalls, although he insists I call them action figure and collectible stalls. Apparently, he’s in pursuit of more Star Wars “dolls”… I guess the four Rubbermaid bins filled with them in the storage locker back home are not enough.
New Year’s Eve dinner is green papaya salad, steamed rice, Pad Thai and shrimp & vegetable noodles at a popular restaurant along one of the canal streets. The food is good but both of us prefer the food stalls along the streets edge.
Thinking we should do something festive, we walk over to Khao San Road to check out the scene and boy, what a scene it is! There’s barely room to walk because of all the people. Neither one of us is much into New Years, whether here or in Canada, so we decide to skip the crowds and hightail it back “home” for snacks and a movie.
The area we’re staying in is more residential than commercial, so there is a wonderful family feel on the streets tonight. People have set up tables & chairs outside their shops and homes to enjoy dinner with friends and family. At 11:55pm, we rush out of our guesthouse to watch the fireworks and prayer lanterns sail into the sky.
As far as we’re concerned this is a great way to spend New Year’s Eve - a little bit of hype, a movie and fireworks.
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