Flower Market

(Katherine) We started our day with a delicious lunch at one of our new favorite street side vendors. I swear, the food they serve at these temporary kitchens are better than any food we’ve eaten in nearby restaurants! After lunch, we found the nearest water taxi stop. These are long motor boats that can fit at least 100 people and move up and down the river very quickly. You also have to hop on and off very quickly or you will miss your stop - they only pause for about 20 seconds!

We got off at the stop for the flower market which is a series of streets with hundreds of flower vendors where they specialize in crafting beautiful arrangements and have a vast wholesale business. We walked the wet and crowded aisles for about an hour, and I marveled at not only their exquisite designs, but their incredibly cheap prices. It’s almost upsetting to think of how much we spent on flowers at our wedding after seeing these prices - we paid at least 10x as much as they were charging! Maybe we should have gotten married in Bangkok….

We hopped back on the water taxi to take it to the end of the line, the Central Pier. We got off and decided to wander around what I would consider to be a 6-star resort, the Shangri-La. I snapped several pictures and we planned to have a drink and watch the sunset, but the prices prompted us to keep moving along. Instead, we paused to enjoy a can of beer back at Central Pier and enjoy a band that was performing outside. Upon further investigation, we noticed that every member of the band was blind. It was actually a very uplifting experience because these guys were really jamming! They also had a couple of blind children sitting with tip boxes and I was happy to see that many people dropped in their extra coins, as did we.

Back in our neighborhood, we tested out a recommendation from WikiTravel that said Tom Yum Kung was the best restaurant in our area. We now think it should be renamed Tom YUCK Kung for their horrible food and service. We tried to put the meal behind us and go to one of the crazy roadside bars called KinCocktails where you sit on plastic stools and are served drinks in buckets for $300 baht (only about $10 USD, but expensive by Khoasan Road standards.) We were just settling in with our bucket when an Brit next to us got up quickly and ran off while knocking over the whole thing, mainly on my shoes. The couple he was with apologized profusely, and they all pitched in to purchase us another bucket. The incident lead to us chatting with the 3-some all night and swapping stories about traveling. The English couple had just been in Vietnam so they had loads of advise to share. Robert befriended our onetime enemy, and later on met a young Thai man who was moving to San Jose, CA as part of his college program. It never ceases to amaze me how small the world really is!