Mar 5 - Bangkok

On the way out for the breakfast/lunch excursion with Bob & Shirley this morning we saw a feral cat outside the building who wanted a treat.

Unfortunately I didn't have one, but got a great picture of the cat:

We headed out to first make an appointment for Shirley for tomorrow for a facial treatment she wanted to do.   On the way I stopped and

got a little fried dough ball for a supplementary breakfast (I had some cereal and fruit in my room earlier in the morning)

Also saw a cool street shrine with a "full sized" statue that I had to take this picture of 

Once Shirley was done we hopped back onto the skytrain (actually we bought some passes that let us do this like MRT passes in Singapore and Taipei - so

we didn't have to keep standing in line later and could just tap the card to enter/exit) and headed towards the street food at the Wang Lang market.   This involved

about 3-4 skytrain stops towards Victory Circle and a transfer to another line followed by about 6-7 stops.    We got to the right stop and then walked directly to the

"express boat" that we had to buy tickets for to get to the market (which was on the other side of and up (or down) the river).    A one way ticket on the boat was 40 BHT,

about $1.24.     We were directed to a short line, vs a super long line, to wait in for our boat.    The big line "drained" onto a boat the showed up and then a few minutes

later our boat showed up.   Here are shots of it and the trip -- about 6 'boat stops' along the river that we took.   By the way, the river was VERY brown and had a lot of 

debris/pollution in it.   Ugh.

Once we got to the correct "dock" for the market street I had wanted to visit we got off and quickly discovered that a straight line of hawker stands had

been setup out from the dock going about 8 to 10 blocks.   They were "bumper to bumper" and to walk along the sidewalk with everyone else, order items

from the stand, and find anywhere to eat was really really tight quarters.   There were also initially a series of 3 or 4 side alleys that were just about as tight,

though they only extended out about 3 blocks themselves.  

Anyway, we pretty quickly found what I had come for which was a type of think pancake (think crepe but much thicker skin) folded over like a taco and filled

with nice sweet things -- creme, coconut, perhaps some nuts?    Think an open faced cannoli and you'd be somewhat close.

So we got back to the Ferry zone, got another set of one way tickets and boated back to the SkyTrain and back towards the hotel.   I went back to my

room for a nap.

Headed out to dinner around 6pm to Sukhumvit 38 (a hawker stand/street food area two skytrain stops away).    As we got to the skytrain stop there

was a great view of this small street and most of the stands on it:

We walked up and down the street to check out the various options and settled on a group of hawkers (about 5 of them) that had setup shop

in front of an inside area with lots of tables -- similar style to what I saw in Penang that first night.   We got a table and were presented with

menu options from each vendor, simply ordering what we wanted to try.   They brought us the food & drink and then we just paid them at our

table.    Much easier than today's shoulder-to-shoulder lunch affair!

Dinner was really great.   I walked around and took a few pictures of the actual hawkers producing the dinner too:

We stopped by one other stand outside for some fried, sliced chicken:

And then moved onto two different dessert stands...

We finished up and headed back to the hotel to goto sleep for the night.