Satellite
Show on map
  • Day 69

    Day 69: It's Chinatown

    August 23, 2016 in Thailand ⋅ ☀️ 34 °C

    Bangkok is such an enormous city, and like every city it's got several distinct districts. As with basically every city in South-East Asia, there's a Chinatown area which the local Chinese diaspora has historically revolved around. Bangkok's Chinatown district is notoriously large and bustling, so we were keen to check it out.

    Off we went on the SkyTrain again, though we opted to walk 15 minutes from the end of the line rather than take the ferry as per yesterday. Although Bangkok proper is noisy, congested and intense, Chinatown is a bit of a game lift in all of these departments again. It's just so hectic and full on with the traffic, the hawkers, the noise, but in a good way I guess. We spent quite a while walking down the main 6-lane drag before veering off into what we thought was a tiny alleyway.

    Although the alley was very narrow, it was actually a major shopping strip. Rather than have their shops face the noisy and polluted street with tuk-tuks honking and buses belching smoke, all the action actually takes place in small alleyways tucked away from the main streets. Everyone you wanted could be bought and bargained for - clothes, jewellry, shoes, hats, tourist trinkets, bags, electronics, toys, cigarettes, sex toys, lottery tickets, Muslim hijabs. We even found the "wig district" where there were 4-5 contiguous stalls selling wigs.

    We explored here for a couple of hours but couldn't find any of the seriously crazy stuff like the gun market or the area where they sell pets or funeral supplies etc, but it was still a fascinating portrait of still life. We also stopped in at a nice looking Chinese Buddhist temple where there was stack upon stack of goods donated for the poor. Sugar, rice, bottled water, packet noodles. There must have been literal tonnes of the stuff, and it brought to mind images of Salvation Army reps doing food drives.

    We didn't really have a proper lunch, just grazed on snacks from various food cards. Some highlights included peanut martabak, fresh pineapple, satay pork skewers for 10 baht each and some Chinese bun things with pandan and coconut. Eventually, tired and footsore we broke our cardinal rule and retreated to Starbucks for an air-conditioned couch and cold beverage.

    Last stop for the day was a short tuk-tuk ride away - the famous Khao San Road. Originally home to backpacker hostels, dive bars and sleaze, the ruling junta has cleaned out a lot of the sleaze in the last few years and replaced it with the same tourist markets you get everywhere in Bangkok. Pushy guys selling suits and tailoring, t-shirts, sunglasses, fake Louis Vuitton and so on. The dive bars and backpacker hostels are still there of course, so we took up a seat and watched people wander past while the sun set.

    We wandered out in search of something to eat and eventually settled on a pad Thai cart on the parallel street of Ram Butri Alley. Pad Thai with chicken for 40 baht each plus a half-litre beer from the nearby 7-11 made for a very cheap dinner! While we were sitting there on our plastic stools, munching away, the rain that had been threatening all evening arrived, and with gusto. It absolutely hammered down in that tropical fashion for about 20 minutes, though thankfully we were (mostly) sheltered under a tarpaulin.

    Once the rain subsided we wandered a few blocks in the drizzle, looking for a taxi that would use the metre and not charge a ridiculous fare. When you tell them you want to go to Sukhumvit they start negotiating at either 250 or 300 baht, which is about double what the metered cost would be. Finally we found a guy who agreed to use the meter, but Bangkok traffic got the best of us. We crawled slowly across the city at basically walking pace, and after an hour we decided to get out and get the subway the rest of the way home. Unfortunately for us there's no subway or Skytrain stops anywhere near Khao San Road!

    Back to the hotel very tired and footsore after a lot of walking in the heat again. Apparently Bangkok is the hottest large city in the world, and I can definitely believe it!
    Read more