Saturday morning in Bangkok

 We both had trouble sleeping last night with Caro being awake since 0200 today.

We talked to our kids and grandkids today via FaceTime video. We have hot weather and home has the coldest weather in over 40 years.

The above are conditions from yesterday

Caro had heard about a weekend market here that (depending on sources) has somewhere between 8,000 and 14,000 stalls (think Mexico tourists markets and multiple massively). The place is called Chatuchak and its location in the city required us to take both Bangkok mass public transportation systems; the MRT (a subway system) and the BTS (an elevated train system). These services efficiently and quickly move people around but strangely are independent of each other requiring two sets of ticketing.

The Mo Chit station where we had to go to get to the market.

It took over thirty minutes to arrive and even though we were there early the place was hopping. We walked around for quite a while with Caro looking at getting a long skirt but we didn’t find anything. We took the opportunity to have a meal there in a large noisy eating area and then shortly after noon we headed back this way.

We stopped at a large park called Lumphini which I had heard was nice to walk around. It turned out to be sort of like Chapultepec Park in Mexico City. We snapped a few photos before heading back here. I was very surprised at how busy the metros are here. It was standing room only for most of the distances we travelled.

We got off at our local MTR station (Wat Mangkon) and walked a few blocks of a noisy, crowded China Town before buying some liquid refreshments at a 7-11 located in the hotel complex on the lower level (our hotel actually starts on Level 4 and our room is on level 7.

We spent a few hours recovering in the hotel room from the heat and our walking (although Caro has left to see if the massage place is open right now to get her feet massaged). Tonight we are booked on an evening river cruise which includes a buffet and entertainment as we cruise by all the big lit up buildings downtown and the historical district (which is where we were yesterday).