My guide – the same nice girl from the previous day – and the driver picked me up at the hotel early in the morning. After an hour or so we had the first stop at a traditional Thai house where they showed all sorts of things like how to make sugar from coconuts, how people used to live there and what parts and rooms a traditional house has. The house was built at a river or water canal and back in the days when people didn’t have cars they would use boats to travel.
After some more driving we arrived at another water canal where you could hire longtail boats that would bring you to a nearby traditional floating market, Dumnoen Saduak. My guide first said we would use a ‘James Bond boat’ but I didn’t really get it until I saw the boat. In ‘The man with the golden gun’ Roger Moore alias James Bond escaped from some martial arts school and used a longtail boat to speed along the water canals. The experience of using one of those boats is pretty cool, my guide and me had a boat for ourselves while all other boats were crammed with tourists.
Later we arrived at the floating market where goods were sold from boats, a major tourist attraction, even though it is now mostly staged for tourists (cars are more popular than boats these days) and most people now sell souvenirs instead of food. But still it was interesting to be there, especially when arriving by boat. I had enough time to check out everything and bought some small Christmas presents.
From the market we drove to a wood factory where they were producing all sorts of art from natural pieces of wood. This is where I got the photo with the wooden elephant from.
The wood factory was the last stop on the tour. Later when I was back at the hotel I went to buy some food. I didn’t eat much during the day, the heat and humidity prevented me from doing so, I simply ate a lot of fresh fruit because you can get it everywhere in Chinatown.
In the evening I decided to check out the restaurant on the top floor of my hotel. It was a rotating platform with 360° panorama view over Bangkok – pretty amazing at night. I ordered all sorts of great food and had a really good and relaxing time. It’s not particularly expensive to eat in a restaurant in Bangkok, even if you need to keep in mind that prices usually are without GST and without the service charge. Apparently tipping isn’t common in Thailand, instead they often add 10% service charge ontop of your bill.
