June 1 and 2, 2023

This is our 5th visit to Bangkok- a huge and bustling city of 12 million people.  We have seen so many sights here so today we decided to go local and we took a tour by tuk tuk to the Klang Toey market.  We are lucky – as a small ship we can come into the river and dock much closer to the center of the city – the bigger ships dock more than 2 hours away since they cannot come into the river and under the bridges here. This building we saw from the ship looks like it is crumbling from the top!

Our tour guide was Gina and she was very good.  We were a group of only 16 people. We arrived after 2 and it was already almost 99 degrees.  We went by bus to the area where we met the tuk tuk drivers – we got into our tuk tuks (named for the sound they make when moving) and headed through the traffic to the market.

The market was a lot like the many we have seen around the world. This is not a tourist area and it is where the local Thai people purchase their food.  It is open 24 hours a day – and you see almost anything here. The first thing we saw was many cages full of live ducks and chickens.  The market has wet floors in many places due to the ice used to keep the food cold.

Here are some of the other sights in the market. There are lots of food stalls and all kinds of food.

Gina bought me some mangos and she bought mangosteen and sticky rice with mango wrapped in banana leaf for us to sample later.

After the market, we went to a local coffee shop called  Café Amazon (no connection with the Amazon we are familiar with).They are a chain that is quite well known here.  I had an iced tea and Norm had an iced coffee.  We sampled the sticky rice and the mangosteen.

We wanted to go out to dinner near the river, so we asked if we could just stay with our tuk tuk instead of going back to the ship and Gina arranged it with our driver.  We went to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel which was absolutely beautiful. It was quite a distance from the coffee shop to that part of the city, and interesting to do it by tuk tuk.

The dining area on the river was lovely but we found out that after 6:30 Norm could not go in wearing shorts.  They do have trousers for patrons but they are made for Asian bodies, not “European” as they say there.  Dress codes can be strict, no sleeveless tops, no flip flops, etc.  So we took the river taxi across the river to the Peninsula Hotel and had dinner at their Thai restaurant also outside on the banks of the river.  It was beautiful and delicious.

As it got dark, the lighted boats were so nice to see.  And there was a woman playing music at the restaurant.

We took a taxi back to the ship, relaxed and got ready for a second day in Bangkok.

Today we took the shuttle to the Central World Mall.  It is an amazing mall, 7 stories and just huge.  I wanted to buy some shoes, and the store had areas with at least 20 different shoe brands. Very confusing and a bit overwhelming.  But I did find a pair I liked. They had Aunt Anne’s pretzels so of course I had to have one.  We stopped for a coffee and continued shopping – well, really mostly looking in amazement.  Many of our familiar stores were there but there were also more than 100 restaurants and some local stores too.

We had spring rolls for lunch, and when we were ready to go back to the ship, I found out that if you spent a certain amount of money, you could choose one of these adorable elephants!

Today was the beginning of the new segment, Bangkok to Tokyo, so there were many new passengers when we returned to the ship.  I got to say goodbye to a favorite casino dealer, Hitesh, who was leaving for his vacation.  I went to the spa raffle – didn’t win anything – then I re-did my Ko Samui post and composed this one. Now we are watching the sights along the river as it gets dark before dinner.

Tomorrow we arrive in Cambodia about 1 PM.