Kate and I met Hyunjoo at 8 AM yesterday to go directly to the famous Chutachak (“JJ”) weekend market, which might be the biggest in the world — I heard that somewhere. Having mentally prepared ourselves for a morning of crowded commercial chaos, were were very suprised to find a quiet, uncrowded and beautiful open-air market, its different sections exquisitely organized by item type and clearly labeled in both Thai and English. Anything you want to buy Chutachak has, in large quantity and for a negotiable price! My favorite things were the rows and rows of colorful, handmade Chinese lanterns and string light sets. We tried some fried balls of something sweet that were really good. No idea what was in them… Soy bean maybe?
Afterward, a taxi drove us to the big river so we could take the water taxi to the Grand Palace. There is a GREAT pad thai restaurant by the pier at the Grand Palace. Unfortunately, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha was closed for ceremonies related to the religious holiday Visakha Puja, the holiest day of the Buddhist calendar which celebrates Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death. So we decided to save the Grand Palace for another day, but we had fun buying sparkly long-sleeved shirts just outside the palace walls, because its dress code required shoes or sandals. Flipflops, short-sleeved shirts, and tank tops weren’t allowed.
At the Grand Palace, we also learned how to properly take a photograph with a monk: you can stand near him, but not touching him — about one foot away is best. Also, you should position yourself lower than him. You can see an example of this in the pictures I’ve uploaded.
We decided instead to go to the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (at Wat Pho) which was nearby. It was my first Thai temple visit! “Wat” means temple in Thai, by the way. It was the most interesting and beautiful thing I’ve seen so far! Be sure to see the new photos of it I’ve posted! The gardens, doorways and stone statues were incredible, not to mention the incredible 45 meter-long golden Buddha inside the main building, with feet inlaid with mother-of-pearl pictures of the 108 “auspicious signs” of a true Buddha. On one side of the statue are 108 round iron pots on little stands, each pot about the size of a bowling ball, into which you can drop coins for good luck and long life. Visitors to the Reclining Buddha stood in one long line and tossed in the tiny gold-colored .25 baht coins as they walked. It made a beautiful kind of clinking clanking music.
After the Wat, we continued walking to Chinatown. We saw really funny things there too, like a pigeon eating his lunch out of a styrofoam to-go container as though he’d just bought it down the street, and an icecream vendor sampling his own wares, but he was eating big scoops of icecream out of a hotdog bun!! The best part were the gorgeous flowers sold by the street vendors: jasmine, lilies, roses, daisies and orchids of all colors sitting in great big piles…It smelled so good!!! We found a huge, cheesy (read: flashy!) shopping center for Chinese goods and little stands with people cooking and selling snacks. If they’d asked me to give it a name, I would have called it China Snack Heaven. Also, it was such an obscure place that we saw absolutely no foreigners or tourists. We ordered and ate a smorgaspord of strange-looking but delicious foods without having a clue what was in them. (If I had to guess, I’d say some of them were quail eggs, pumpkin bread, fish powder and candied coconut, but how can we be sure?)
For dinner, Hyunjoo took us to a Korean BBQ restaurant in the Asok neighborhood. I have never had a meal involving so many tiny bowls! Your main dish is accompanied by about 10 side dishes, which you can sample and then order more of, as many times as you want to! I had a kind of beef soup that is poured over rice. Some of our side dishes included clams, kim chi, omelettes and anchovy salad. We also went to a Korean grocery store where we sampled an ancient type of Korean cinnamon juice.
We met a Thai pharmacist named Eddie who taught Kate how to say “I’m a vegetarian”: Mung Sow WEE Raht.
