Morning Exploration in Bangkok

Thursday morning we weren’t supposed to meet our tour guide until noon, so we just kind of lounged around for a while (having awakened at 3:00 am).

About 6:00, it was time for a trip to the lobby for coffee. From their reaction, you’da thunk that we asked for a child to sacrifice at dawn.

It wasn’t that we wanted coffee. It was that I was going to wait around and then carry it back upstairs myself.

Finally, they convinced me to go back to the room and they’d bring it up shortly.

They did – two porcelain pots, cups and saucers, a matching creamer and little demitasse spoons.

We’d have been happy with a paper cup with one of those little protectors like Starbucks puts around it so you don’t burn your hand.

It got the day started, though, so we could get dressed and walk around the neighborhood with more of our wits and daylight to help.

There are little open cabs (looking suspiciously like Cushman utility carts that mated with a picnic shelter) called Tuk-Tuks (the u is long, so it’s more like “took-took” than “tuck-tuck”) that have very aggressive drivers. They want to get all in your bidness about where you going, where you oughta be goin’, and what you oughta do after your there – all with a negotiable price for transportation. We were walking, but don’t get in those anyhow.

They’re open and un-air conditioned. In a place where getting stuck in traffic is the norm, you don’t need those qualities in your get-around.

The first thing you notice about Bangkok in the mornings is that it’s even more chaos than it was the night before, because all those open booths were taken down (sometime after we went to bed) and have to be put back together and set up again for today’s shoppers.

If you have a folding table, you can be a small business person here. If you have two, you can be a franchisee and 3 makes you a tycoon.  Had Sam Walton had their business plan, he could have ruled the world.

Oh, wait -- never mind.

You can’t help but notice is the assault of smells on your senses as you walk through these booths. Probably 70% of them are food related, so you’re constantly walking through one waft after another of something frying, boiling or otherwise being prepared. This seems to be how the masses eat.

The one thing we didn’t care for are the whole fish – about the size of an adult’s hand – that have been grilled and are ready to eat.

Right there on a stick.

Eyes and all.

As a rule, neither of us cares for food that looks back at me from my plate – or stick – regardless of our prior relationship. Squeamish, maybe, but that’s just the way it is.

We wandered around for a while, took some pictures and noted some landmarks since everything looks different in the dark. Then it was back to the hotel to meet our guide.