DAY 3:
As you can see from the title, Day 3 was pretty insane, jam packed with a whole day of places to cover. we booked a guided tour to the Railway + Floating Market through a groupon voucher and i'm really glad we shelled out that extra bucks to secure the tour. because those two markets were about an hour's drive away from central BKK, there was no way we could have made it there ourselves without getting conned / lost haha.
anyway, we woke at 6am to get ready for our tour guide to pick us up at 7:10am on Day 3. again, our hostel host woke up early to prepare breakfast for us! touched to tears.
broken egg yolk or not, still head over heels for this hand-made breakfast.
sleepy morning faces
Mae Klong Railway Market
after a long ride out on the van with a Singaporean family and a Singaporean couple, we finally arrived! the tour guide gave us some time to roam about the market and it was really nice taking in the the sights and smells by ourselves.
such a cute ahma!! she's wearing the hairband in celebration of the King's birthday month
then came the main highlight of the trip! at 9.40am (every morning, i believe), an actual train passes through the market on the train tracks and the stall owners would keep their wares and fold their umbrellas to make way for the incoming train. so by 9.30, all the smart tourists (including us) started to standby in camera-ready position to capture this eye-opening scene!
see all the kiasu Singaporeans waiting (actually we were ready before them...)
when the announcement blared, the storeowners started moving about like clockwork. kinda fascinating watching the ingenious contraptions with which they place their stores to make it more mutable (e.g. fixing rollers underneath so they could just slide the whole store back). minimal effort to accommodate the passing train. but the real surprise was how close the train came to us. we stood at the side of the stores and the train was literally an arm's length apart from our face! thankfully it was moving really slowly, i assumed it would be going past us in a jiffy.
got a closer look at the train which stopped at the head of the station
off to the floating market!
Damnoen Saduak Floating Market
when we reached, our tour guide hustled us onto the boats and off we went! was pretty excited since it was the first time i could tour a floating market and i must say it was a really good experience (: although there were a few bad scares when the boat was rocking and i was afraid we would capsize D:
once you signalled your interest at the wares peddled on the floating boats, the vendors would 'hook' your boat in!
traffic jam on the waters
BUY ALL THE THAI ELEPHANTS!
bought freshly grilled scallops to enjoy on our boat ride! so fresh and juicy...
this was lunch! only 40B I think.
the most vaunted coconut ice cream!! you can't miss this! i went back for a second serving XD in fact, i thought it tasted better than the one at Chatuchak. though the Chatuchak one offered toppings so i guess that evens out.
my phone is great at taking flattering photos.
we shopped around a while more at the market and then went back to our van. the kind driver offered to drive us to wherever was next on our itinerary (as long as it wasn't too far off from town) and he dropped us right outside Terminal 21, as requested! so grateful, so we offered him a nice tip haha.Terminal 21
Terminal 21 is a themed mall that offers a truly memorable visitor's experience - each level is themed in an iconic locale of the world (Paris, Istanbul, Rome, Tokyo etc.) and the furnishing is truthful down to the Hearts in SF art installations and the beautiful marble statues of Rome. gives you a great taste of how it feels like to be in these parts of the world!
aerial view of the SF Golden Gate Bridge
we didn't manage to get pictures of this, but another must-visit place is the Terminal 21 Food Court that sold quality Thai dishes at dirt cheap prices. in fact, they were even cheaper than most roadside stalls that Y and I frequented! between the two of us, we ordered 2 main courses and 1 dessert and the total cost came up to be less than 100B.
Yaowarat
some photos of a nice temple that we passed while on foot to Yaowarat from the BTS station
met this cool French dude who gamely posed for my picture! hahaha too cute. he even had an article published about his story - how he chose to leave France to come to Bangkok and sell roadside noodles.
ooh spotted this 林真香 store along the roads of Yaowarat that sold local chinese snacks (kinda like the equivalent of Singapore's 美珍香) so grabbed the chance to buy some snacks back home!
of course, we came to Yaowarat to experience the really cheap and good seafood! unfortunately because we had an early dinner at Terminal 21 we couldn't order much but it was still quite cool chilling out by the road side and ordering my first glass of beer in Bangkok.
our hostel hosts told us that the seafood stalls were apparently divided into the blue and the red camps but we decided to be politically apathetic and chose the green one instead :D (no la we just chose this because it had a long queue. typical Singaporean behaviour, long queue = food must be good)
yaye beer!
after the hearty dinner, we went for a bowl of bird's nest at one of the nearby restaurants and called it a day. was a really eventful and rewarding time eating and experiencing new things - this is what all holidays should be about!
