On the third day of Christmas, we woke up between the hours of 4 and 8 am, ate salsa-cheese omelets bread and nectarines and coffee and anpan and mango juice, then set out on our adventures around 9:00.
What will we see today? Well, our first goal was to ride the sky train and get a sky-high tour of the city. We boarded the train at a station about a 7 minute walk from our hotel and rode to the end of the line, then got off and visited a park and a market. The market filled a rickety old building and spilled out along the street. There were food vendors, shoe vendors, t-shirt vendors, drink vendors, toy vendors, etc. It was interesting to browse, but we didn't buy much.
Then we hopped back on the train and headed for the canals. We joined a tour on a long-tailed boat, which is a long thin boat with a huge motor at the back. Every time we hit some waves we were bounced into the air. Ari screamed. Myra laughed. Ani said 'this is pretty smooth' then the boat went 'cabang thunk'.
The tour lasted two hours and took us past awesome temples and not-as-awesome-yet-still-sparkly temples; skyscrapers in window splendor; stilted dwellings with the occasional swimmer (the river was not clean); to a floating market (where we got off for a short while wandering the stalls, wondering what the baby turtles were for and such); but the most interesting part of the tour was the variety of areas we passed through. Coming from a rich country like the USA, it is really weird to see such poverty. It was also interesting to see the different types of structures, like the houses on stilts and the mansion between them. Every dwelling was decorated with plants, wind-chimes, large jars, mobiles, or colored walls.
After the tour, we returned to the Siam mall for lunch. The food court was huge, taking up an entire floor of the mall. The stalls were lined up along the wall lie a long cafeteria. They didn't accept cash - you had to buy a cafeteria cash card and put money on it, then use it to pay for food. We got an assortment of curries, soup, and juice/tea, all for about $2 a person. On the way out of the mall we stopped to play with the awesome interactive map. In addition to allowing you to view the different levels of the mall, clicking on a store would give you directions from your current location. It was fun to play with.
Our last task was to ride the sky train to the other end of the line. There was nothing there, but the trip back and forth was neat. Lots of temples, billboards, funny Thai commercials (in the train), and poor-looking apartment buildings with dozens of red satellites. Even falling-apart houses on stilts in the river had installed satellites.
At this point we had been on the move for 7 hours and were exhausted. We returned to the hotel, swam, ate dinner, then collapsed into bed.
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