Bangkok Farewell

We leave in the morning for Yangon, Myanmar. Time enough for one last breakfast at Ricky's until the end of the month. We revisited the Amulet Market today but the woman with the old postcards was absent. However, out of all the crazy crappy faux antiques, one lovely little gau stood out and I got it for a song...well, maybe not a song, but I was definitely humming a tune as I slipped it in my bag. We took a tuk tuk to Pahurat, the Indian cloth market, where we were unceremoniously deposited at the beginning of one of the warrens of aisles that meander through Sampaeng Lane. Lost, lost, lost, it didn't matter because every once in a while we caught a glimpse of daylight off to the left. Coming to a dead end, we turned left and exited into the street, disoriented, but finally figuring out where we were. It's a miracle to really recognize anything in Bangkok, because there is so much and it all looks very similar. We were not in the buying mood so we took a taxi (god bless air conditioning) back to the New Siam, took a brief shower, grabbed some lunch down Phra Atit, back to the room and hit the bed, sleeping all afternoon. Apparently the combination of intense massage and jet lag finally caught up with us. For dinner, we made it as far as the restaurant across the street at the New Siam Riverside. Jok Pochana was closed for the day and the roti restaurant was closed as well. The Riverside was fine. We sat by the Chao Phraya drinking Tiger Beer and watching the fat little cross-river ferries head home for the night. The Chao Phraya resembles a big sloppy bathtub, but it is a hub of the city, running in an thick, water hyacinth littered ribbon through Krung Thup, the great city of Bangkok. The best thing about the restaurant at the Riverside is easy access to a table by the riverwalk and a front row view of the slow barges heading down the river, the elaborately lit tourist boats taking diners up and down the river to the strains of karaoke or live bands belting out renditions of "Dock of the Bay" and "Happy Birthday". Bangkok is a big, messy, dirty, crowded, confusing city,one that we avoided for years on our trips in and out of Southeast Asia. Lately we have developed an affection for the uniquely Thai version of modernity it offers, as well as the plethora of food and shopping and people watching, from Pantip Plaza with its escalators turned stairways and overabundance of DVD porn thinly disguised as new movies, to the tunnels of Sampaeng Lane and the overload of Chatuchak. We are off to Burma, modern day Myanmar. We'll let you know what happens next and be back for a weekend of serious shopping on the 24th of January.