We woke up and had breakfast before heading to the Golden Mount. On the way there, we passed beautiful canals!
The Golden Mount itself was pretty cool. The view from the top was beautiful.
It was such a miserably hot day, though, so we headed back to the hostel pretty quickly and taking heat-induced naps. Later in the evening, we took a boat cruise down the river at sunset. Beautiful. We took the SkyTrain up to Lumphini Park, walked through, and hit the night market. It was beautiful with a lot of different things in addition to the cheap crap.
For the midnight festivities, we headed back to our hostel. We wandered across the street to a bar with an awesome rock band playing outside with good cheap drinks to bring in the new year. They had blown up balloons and passed them out to everyone so we could pop them at midnight. There were a few different places that were shooting off fireworks that e watched through all the lanterns that had been strung up for a few days. It was beautiful.
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January 1st, 2010
HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2010. I can’t really even believe it! And what a great way to spend New years Day (as opposed to last year—doing laundry... haha)! Today, as per the suggestion of Pai, we made our way to not one but two floating markets. The alarm went off at 6h00, an early start after the New Year’s festivities, but it was totally worth it. We took a taxi and then a bus to get to Damnoen Saduak, the first floating market. The bus tickets were B64 = $2. For an hour and a half trip. Crazy.
We hopped in an overpriced motorboat to take a tour around the market full of people just trying to rip us off. It was fun to tool around in the boat, but we left with buying only some chili powder, curry paste, and other spices. It was beautiful, though.
We hopped in a small truck that took us to the main road where we could catch a bus to Amphawa, the city with the other floating market. The locals told us when to get off and what direction to head and we meandered down the river to get to the city center where we found a beautiful little market.
We sat down for a delicious lunch of “fried rice vegetables” and bean sprouts. It was delicious! We started wandering around... and it was fun to see such original things! They had some great artisan work. Very creative. I bought a Thai shirt that translates to something like “beautiful, clam, slaps when necessary.” Haha. Awesome.
We wandered around to the other side where we were just able to walk around and try some samples of a lot of the food. They don’t seem to get many foreigners... I didn’t see any the whole time we were there! They weren’t pestering us to buy anything. It was just that they wanted us to try and see. It was really nice.
Once home, we caught one more massage, ate one more delicious Thai meal, and got two more rounds of cheap drinks before calling it a night.
What an amazing day to finish an incredible trip and to start hopefully an amazing year. It might not sound like that great a day, but it was fantastic. It was very... Thai... and just plain awesome.
AMAZING TRIP.
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