Bangkok - Markets & BBQ

Saturday 8th July
Today is a special festival day in Thailand, a Buddhist Sabbath, to celebrate one of Buddha's sermons. I think there are plenty of special events at the temples and some of the shops are closed but everything else seems pretty much the same. Biggest issue for us is that all bars, restaurants & shops are not allowed to sell alcohol.
After breakfast and dropping off some more laundry we jumped on our now familiar train, the underground this time, and headed off to the Jatujak Markets, supposedly one of the largest in the world. It is mostly undecover and many of the stalls are permanent. Can buy anything to furnish yourself, your house or business. Could easily spend 1/2 day wandering through the little alleys, weaving in and out. While it supposedly is set up in themed areas, there does not seem to be any pattern, there will be handcraft stall next to a massage stall next to a glassware stall next to an aromatherapy stall and so on. The range of quality also varies greatly, can buy really cheap clothing or high quality material. It is all pretty clean and the stall holders are friendly enough and not too pushy. We picked up some material, jewellery and toys and were well satisfied after a couple of hours wandering through while it was still relatively quiet. As we left it was starting to get very busy and hard to get through the narrow lanes.
So back on the train, stopping at the department store Terminal 21 for coffee and pick up some stuff for the afternoon activity.
Dropped our stuff off at the hotel and then hit the road and walked about 1.5km down to the apartment of Colin & Eiko and their children, friends of Justin, who had invited us over to christen their newly aquired BBQ. They have a lovely apartment on the 11th floor of a housing complex and overlook the sports fields of the neighbouring university. Colin had planned ahead and bought beer the day before. We had an excellent afternoon there, managed to watch some All Black vs British Lions over the internet, had some excellent steak & sausages & salad. Quite surreal doing such Aussie stuff, if such a setting. Was great to Colin & Eiko to have us there.
Was latish when we got back to our hotel so Therrie & Ross decided to stay in, Louisa Sue & Peter went for a walk looking for somewhere not to expensive to eat. Pretty quiet around the area except the numerous shops hoping we were looking for a massage rather then a feed. Plenty of the restaurants were empty so we avoided them. So after walking around for 1/2 hour we ended up just back near our hotel and had a nice dinner there.
Despite the forecast it did NOT rain today. Weather was very warm (32C) and humid.

Highlights
* Jatujak markets,
* BBQ & hospitality at Colin & Eiko'sRead more