It's all part of the journey

Walking. Most sidewalks here are full of street vendors. Either food or stuff. And you see the same stuff over and over. The fruit cart, the grilled meat cart. The Izod polo shirt table (why?) and the sequined elephant stuff table. Streets are full of cars and, especially on Silom, the sidewalks are full of people. This is a big, crowded, noisy city. I’ll be glad to see the rest of the country.

Train. I took the Skytrain which travels above the street. A different view of the tops of buildings. Some very elegant and some covered in corregated, rusty tin sheets. Lonely Planet says that the cars are very air-conditioned. And they were right. But it felt good.

Boat. My plan today was go ride the commuter boat along the river. There’s several types of boats – ferries, tourist-specific, and color-coded boats. I thought I was on the right one until it headed across the river instead of up it. Note to me: “ferry” means one that goes across. There’s 7 Baht down the drain (about 30 cents). After I found the right boat and read the map I decided to ride it up to the area near the Grand Palace and the big wats (temples). The view along the river was fascinating. The giant barge with the cat in the little houseboat in back was cool.

After walking around a while (see a later post on the Closed-Temple scam) I had backtracked and picked up the boat going back. I only walked down one dead-end alley by mistake. I also found some wholesale food area with guys loading huge wicker baskets full of vegetables.

I’d call today a success. I mastered the Skytrain and the river boat system. And got back where I started from. And figured out how to look for the street vendor squeezing oranges and bottling the juice right there. Yum.