Sunday, February 17, 2013

Bangkok the Weekend Market

Today we took the sky train to the Weekend Market. I highly recommend this. It is clean, cool and easy to figure out. We bought cross town tickets for 40 bahts each. A baht is worth about 3 cents.
The weekend market is this gigantic place that you can get lost in, full of vendors of everything you can think of. Over 7 thousand vendors. William is just interested in Section One. Antiques and (pseudo) antiques, you guess and take the risk.
Wrapping up the metal Buddha that William bought. Not like the one on the shelf.
More like this one but not quite. Although his Buddha is in a subduing Mara pose. I didn't know this story before yesterday. Buddha was meditating when Mara came up with a bunch of demons. Buddha moves his right hand down to summon Mother Earth. She came out to fight for him and drowned the demons in a flood. Neat.
At another shop he bought two hands in a Buddha teaching pose.
We lunched in the market and then walked back to the sky train through the park.
40 bahts for lunch plus 40 bahts for a watermelon smoothie for each.
I look pretty good even though I had just dumped 1/2 a bottle of water on my head. It is hot here.
Back to the hotel pool. I stayed in until I was well shriveled up. No other Americans around here. French, Swedish, Brits. We hear we may run into Americans in the north.
We are at the back of the hotel away from any street noise. behind us us the Bangkok Christian Hospital. Today William spots them scrubbing the pavement in front of the hospital entrance.
I then noticed that a hospital patient appeared to be drying their clothes using their IV pole as a drying rack.
We are tired of India food and Thai food so we walk a bit past the Patpong night market and find a place that serves pizza and beer.  William orders a pitcher of beer which turns out to hold 3 large glasses and a large pizza, all of 8 inches in diameter, but it was enough.
Up early in the AM and off to the north of Thailand.

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