March 14, 2016

My quest for quality Mexican is finally over. I can't believe it's taken this long, but I went to Chatuchak Green for the first time pretty recently. We were there to meet Chai, a friend of Stephan's. He runs a booth there that sells Mexican food. And wow, Chatuchak Green is quite the place. A massive night market, larger than anything I've seen so far in Thailand. Rivaling Shilin in scale, it's more geared towards eating and drinking than Chatuchak Market. Chai whipped up some nachos, tacos, and burritos for about $1-$2 each. That's what I'm talking about. Why does Mexican food need to be $5 a taco? It's one of the cheapest things in the world to make! It was pretty darn good, a little sweeter than I'm used to. Then again, Thais have quite the sweet tooth, so it doesn't surprise me he made it that way. I wish it wasn't so far from home, because I'm a big fan.

As in almost every weekend, Ella and I were looking for something to do. There was a Coffee Trade Show in town, which sounded fun. It was free to get in so that sounded exceptionally fun. Soon after walking in, one of the booths had an extensive menu of drinks with coffee in them, but I wouldn't exactly call them "coffee". I noticed a few of them were alcoholic. And so began my drinking spree at 10am. I got an Irish Coffee, which may have been one of the strongest mixed drinks I have ever had. 90% whiskey, it was an interesting start to the morning. While the rest of the convention didn't have the morning drunk vibe, there was far more than coffee there. Tons of sodas, fruit juices, and coffee-inspired products, I was proper hopped up on caffeine by the time lunch rolled around. For the grand total of 0 baht, it was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning.






We also got the chance to visit a museum often seen on Google Maps, but I have found no information on-line about. The Thai Labor Museum is an unassuming house out in an industrial part of town, next to a train station. Also free to get in, it was surprisingly well done and really should have far more visitors than it does. When looking at the guestbook, it averaged about one visit a day. Which kind of broke my heart, because the lady inside was super, super nice and really went out of her way to ensure we had a wonderful stay, despite her lack of English skills. I hope she doesn't live off of donations. But it should be much higher on travel sites. It's not going to blow your mind or anything, but it has lots of dioramas and authentic pieces from Thailand's history. Ella took a super long video of the whole place, so I suppose if you don't feel like visiting it yourself you can see that video I'm going to embed over here. Or over there. Over somewhere.



There was also a brief visit to the new re-opened Tubtim Shrine (previous entry here). Weird place, still full of penises. But not as many as there were previously. Since the whole purpose of this place is to see penises, I am unsure if that's a good or bad thing. Anyway, we checked it out at least. We also made a trip to Bang Pa In, the King's summer palace. I went to Bang Pa In one time, long ago, on one of my first weeks in Thailand. It was nice. I got there by riding on top of an ice cream truck, wearing a cowboy hat, and yelling at Chinese tourists. That story is here. Anyway, this time we took the train up, which is always a fun time in and of itself. For 14 baht, you can't really complain. It's by far the cheapest way to get around. As is so often the case with places like this, there isn't really too much I can say about it. It's pretty. There were lots of photos and same video. Here is some of them. I wonder when was the last time the King used this place? If I were some visiting dignitary, I would want to hang out here. It's very peaceful, and has a calm that Bangkok definitely does not have.










This blog was very video heavy, and that's something Ella and I have been doing more of lately. I remember back in Taiwan I did a few posts on different Taiwanese snacks at 7-11. I decided to do that again, and I collected some of the weirdest Thai snacks I could find. Then Ella and I sat around and ate them. So here's that video, if you ever want to know what Thai convenience store food is like.


No comments:

Post a Comment