Floating Market

We drove past this local market on our way to the Floating Market. I took this shot to capture the omnipresent motor bikes. They were everywhere you looked.


The market's popularity has drawn vendors to set up shop over this operational rail line. The stalls were set up for quick removal for incoming trains.


We passed endless salt fields on our drive.


The first stop of the day was at a traditional farmhouse. Our guide demonstrated coconut cream, sugar, and syrup production.


The worker scooped coconut syrup into huge buckets.


Shoes are removed before entry into any house because the floor is used for all parts of life - eating, lounging, sleeping, etc.


We took long speedboats through the canals into the Dumnoen Saduak Floating Market.


I sat in the very front of the boat...


...and there's Katie a few seats back.


A lot of the boats had the same things on offer - lots of mysterious fruit! Katie and I tried dragon fruit, pummelo, sweet apples, and lychies.


We were wall-to-wall (or boat-to-boat) people as we made our way through the market. The gondolas did not feel all that secure but I'm not sure it would be possible for one to tip given their close proximity.


Another shot of all the people - and this was early in the morning before it got too busy!


Here we are in our own private paddle boat. We were held a bit captive to the sales pitches as our driver would steer us towards certain boats/vendors and we were subject to her decision to pull away.


We tried the coconut milk but did not appreciate its taste.


These fancy Chinese hats fold up into a single stack or can be held open halfway and used to fan yourself.


This intricately designed table was one of many wonders at the Rim Klong wood carving market.


There were so many people carefully chipping away at gigantic masterpieces of incricate jungle scenes, elephant wall hangings, etc. Katie and I fell in love with elephant lamps in the shop and splurged to take them home as souvenirs.


Next we visited Prapatomchedi, the largest "first" pagoda in Thailand.


This standing buddha at the entrance was very significant as it stood above the King's ashes. The majority of people we saw around Bangkok were wearing yellow in honor of the King's birthday and 60th Anniversary which is remembered weekly on Mondays. Other colors are suggested to be worn on other days.


We stumbled upon this Reclining Buddha at the pagoda, which was smaller but similar to the famed Reclining Buddha at Wat Po, which we visited the next day.


Here's the head of the Reclining Buddha.


After lunch, Katie and I hammed it up for a photo shoot around the Rose Garden.


Katie's swinging around poles through the roses. Ouch! Those thorns are prickly!


Katie shows off a litchie - a grape-like consistency white jelly fruit inside a funky prickly outter shell.


Floating markets everywhere! There were more fruit boats at the Rose Garden.


The Rose Garden also included a short elephant show and opportunity to pose with the elephants.


Same elephant, different girl.


And here we are together, on either side of the perfectly poised elephant. They are really well-trained.


Did you ever see so much liquid leaving an animal at any one time? It was like a hose turned on full blast.


The Thai Cultural Show was very commercialized, but this guy got right into beating the drum with conviction and force.


We got a second sample of Thai kickboxing, though this round seemed a bit more staged.


The Thai wedding ceremony was among the more interesting inclusions of the cultural show.


The entire community seemed to join together to celebrate the wedding with live animals and food and dancing.


These long fingered ladies were common in the cultural shows.


Here the couples are dancing through very quickly moving bamboo slats.


That evening we were treated to more "culture" with a free Thai dinner and Thai classic dancing at our hotel, the Indra Regent. We sat barefoot with our feet dangling over the edge of the elevated floor covered with cushions. We saw both couples from our table many times subsequently.


We had a sampler platter with soup, roast beef, stuffed pork omelette, fried fish with spicy and sour sauce, yellow coconut curry with jasmine rice, and Thai sweets and fruit. We ate with gold silverware and had fancily folded cloth napkins placed onto our laps.


The girl on the furthest right was most intriguing to watch as she was clearly double-jointed.


The costumes were ornate, but in general the evening consisted of slow, repetitive dancing and we felt hostage to the torture.


We were eager to escape and were the first to leave. I think we hit our threshold for culture that day, as everything else was a 'must-see' but we really no longer cared.

Patpong Night Market

A trendy little tuk-tuk outside our hotel in Bangkok.


Katie looks like she belongs on Price is Right, doesn't she? What a model! She's showing off Patpong Night Market.

Happy Birthday Mom!! Sunday we flew from Phuket to Bangkok and immediately made our way to the highly recommended Platinum Mall which had six levels of kiosks. The place was massive with fixed wholesale prices leaving little to no room for us to exercise our expert bargaining skills. It was shocking to see street-like market stalls packed into what closely resembled a normal mall but with ridiculously cheap prices. If only this was the norm. The food court was an experience in itself with 60 different vendors all with look alike signs requiring prepaid coupons to buy any food, very similar to carnival fare. Katie fell in love with suki yaki soup with crab, a new discovery for her. We made our way through the street markets on our way back to the hotel with an obligatory stop at our standby 7-11 straight across from our hotel. It was freakishly convenient how common they were and how there was always one within very close proximity of our hotel.

We took a taxi to Patpong Night Market between Surawong & Silom roads that evening, where we put our bargaining skills to the test once again. Patpong is the famous sex strip and night market with a myriad of vendors and blocks of bars and clubs. Lady boys were aplenty once again, with one passionately modelling purses for sale, others offering free ping-pong shows...and we thought we had escaped that in Patong.

Phi Phi Island

Carefree, Katie and I boarded the speedboat for the Phang Nha Eco Tour to Phi Phi Island. We visited two islands - Phi Phi Don (larger one) and Phi Phi Ley (smaller). When the guide asked those seated in the front of the boat if anyone was pregnant or had back problems, we happily declared no and were excited for a wild ride.


Little did we expect to develop back problems en route. The ride was WILD and the waves tossed us up and down onto our butts. A few jostles felt less than pleasant but we continued pounding into the crashing waves and one shocking pounce lifted us 4 feet into the air and sent shrieking pain up our spines when we came crashing down. We both experienced unbelievable back pain, eeked for the boat to slow down, and tearfully moved to the back of the boat for a calmer ride. In the moment, it was scary and we weren't sure what kind of lasting damage we'd done to our backs. Both of us recovered within a few days and are back to normal now. Katie shakes her finger at the mean boat.


Our first stop was at Maya Bay where the Hollywood film "The Beach" was produced. We had beautiful sunny weather in this tropical paradise but we could hardly move. I got off the boat and immediately fell onto my back directly in the sand. I forced myself to move around in the water to try keep my back from tightening up. These expressions of grimace and pain were not over-exaggerated!


The color of the water was amazing as we jetted around the islands.


We stopped by Monkey Beach and watched the boat crew feed the monkeys fruit. The monkeys ate like humans.


We saw 8 or 9 monkeys in the trees including this baby monkey.


The water seemed to almost glow with fluoresence in this spot. We went for two rounds of snorkelling in Lho Sa Mah Bay, Pi Leh Cove, and Hin Klang. The second round was the best snorkelling we've ever done in terms of the quantity and brilliant colors of the fish we saw. Katie's favorite was the black spiky sea urchins and funky coral. We stopped by Laem Tong Beach for lunch and walked barefoot into the restaurant which had a thin layering of sand across its floor. Not a bad lifestyle.


The final stop of the day was at Khai Nai Island where we reclined on beach chairs in the sun. There was lots of sharp coral and shells in the sand with minnows swimming in the shallow water. We were somewhat delusional with back pain and our favorite expression of the day was "sneezing is like farting out your nose" - yep, that's a true original.


We rode by this tsunami damage on our way back to the Boat Lagoon Marina.


These were the only remnants of the tsunami we saw while in Phuket. The areas we visited were completely rebuilt. That night we collapsed into our hotel beds without a prayer of moving. We did painfully pack our suitcases in the event we were even worse off in the morning and completely unable to move. We were hopeful the next day of flying would not be complete torture.