It is raining cats and dogs. Even worse than that. It is pouring down. The thunder is loud and just around the corner. I am in Bangkok, inside and it is cozy.
I must have been very tired since I slept for 11 hours. I share the mixed dorm with 4 young chinese guys. They are very polite and only one of them knows English enough to have a sort of conversation but one can sense that they are all the only child in their family. Not spoiled, they do their washing and are very capable. I have seen the dorms chinese students live in so in. Different standard. Anyway, my roommates are not the most quiet ones but I had no trouble sleeping.
Late morning, but well deserved sleep so I decided to extend my stay here until Sunday. So what to do today?
As I told you yesterday I love markets. Not for the shopping but for the photo opportunities. Street photo is a passion. I always have been very observant on what people around me are doing so that part of street photography was the easy one. Anyway, markets, today I aimed for the vegetable and flower market. They are very close to each other.
The map said the 5.4 kilometres would take me 1.15 hours to walk. So I started walking. After one hour I realised I was hungry. No wonder since I forgot to have breakfast. I stopped by one of the mobile restaurants and had vegetable soup and rice. A simple but extremely tasty dish. Onward. I skipped the busy roads and tried to stick to the alleys when possible.
That is where the people have their day to day life. All the tiny shops, street markets, street restaurants. Street life in other words. A lot of people actually live big part of their lives on the sidewalk. The sidewalk is either their living room, porch, bedroom of a sort, children make their homework there, grannies take a nap there, some just sit down and read the paper. I love this street life.
At the same time I can’t stop wondering how they cope with the traffic and the noise. I have been in cities with even heavier traffic and I was as puzzled then as I am now.
Finally I reached the river Chao Phraya. Cities with closeness to water appeals to me. I saw three tug boats towing tre enormous conjoined flatboats. The tug boats sounded as if they were struggling with the weight.
The flower market was wonderful, I never found the vegetable market, I passed the hardware district, I passed street markets were they sold everything from pills to you name it.
I walked 14,5 kilometres in 5 hours, I had 2 delicious meals and my knee almost killed me at the end but I feel happy.