This should be a kinda short one, just my last day in Kanchanaburi for my bus to leave that night and I just spent the whole day wandering through the less touristy part of town.

A more attractive shot of my guest house

Not sure what’s going on here, a giant bee hive?

As you walk around town you pass shops with this incredible smell wafting out of them.  The shops themselves don’t look like much, more like a garage than a bakery, but they smell like waffles, or fresh ice cream cones.  They’re make with coconut (isn’t everything?) and they have a couple of different varieties, some flavored with mango or durian.  I couldn’t tell the difference between them, so I just chose the ones in the orange packaging.  As far as I can tell, they’re the plain coconut ones.  They’re like and not too sweet, a good breakfasty-snack.  I’m sure they’d be great with coffee, if you’re into that kind of thing.

*Coconut wafers with black sesame (40 baht)

And if you were worried all I eat is junk food, don’t be!  Because coconut ice cream is healthy!

*It says so right on the cup so it must be true! (20 baht)

Frogs for sale in the market.  I also saw the “after” state being sold as well.

Curry paste, I think

Cats again

And puppies

And to think I hate ironing with modern irons!

The few fishing boats I saw, most were floating restaurant/party boats

An entire store that just sold rice

Scooter with sidecar, this time in use

*Mystery drink, cola colored but not cola flavored, it was sweet, with strings of gelatin mixed into the crushed ice (15 baht)

A couple of chip varities: hot chili squid flavor, namtok hotpot, and nori seaweed.  Pretty sure Lay’s doesn’t market these in the States.

Fried crab and fish chips, the first ingredient was tapioca, but after that, all actual crab or fish and seasonings

Dunkin’ Donuts has much cuter donuts in Thailand

*Dinner! Salt crusted whole fish (150 baht)

*Morning glory vine, fried with garlic. It was good, kind of like broccoli raab, with a teriyaki like sauce (60 baht)

Tuk tuk ride to the bus station

Bus station bathroom. I’ll just hold it, thanks

The bus was super plush, and they gave us food and drinks and water.  The seats reclined almost the way back.  It’s a 10 hour trip, overnight, and it cost 820 baht ($23) There was another, less plush bus next to us in the bus station, which was making the same trip.  It was filled with Thai people, whereas my bus was almost all foreigners.  I’m sure the other bus was cheaper, but when I bought my ticket, they didn’t give me a choice.

Disco bus?

No filter, it really looked like this

Luckily they turned the disco lights off not long after leaving the station.  I put on my eye mask and neck pillow (I apologize to all of the people who I have been mocking in my head for years, they’re totally worth looking dorky over!) just slept the entire ride.  In Chiang Mai now and about to go exploring.  Full day cooking class with a trip to the market and playing with elephants to come!

Only I could spend an entire day splashing around in waterfalls and still make a post that’s almost exclusively pictures of food.  But here we go again.  In my defense, the waterfalls were wet, and so was I after swimming in them.  I didn’t want to risk my camera and/or phone, and it’s hard to take pictures of yourself when you’re by yourself.  I hate to admit it but I’m starting to understand the functionality of a selfie stick.  Plus, you don’t really need to see a selfie of me in my bathing suit anyway. Ugh. In any case, I took a retro 2 hour bus ride to the waterfalls in the morning, and spent the day there before catching the bus back.  It was a lot of travel but the ride itself was pretty.  We drove through the mountains and the light had a really golden color to it.  I didn’t see much on the way home as the bus was so crowded I had to sit on the floor.

*Jackfruit, being cut up and sectioned.  Breakfast!  The flavor is good, but fairly mild.  The texture is hard to explain, it’s more like a pineapple in that way than anything else, but definitely in a category of its own.

Some beautiful handmade sarongs (I bought a less beautiful, less expensive not-handmade one)

Retro bus to Erawan

The interior had wood plank floors (through which you could see the ground at spots) and actual oscillating fans attached to the ceiling instead of air conditioning.

Plus these are kinda my favorite colors

There was also a poster about guarding your picnic lunch from the monkeys.  Sadly, it seemed to be monkey-free today

There are seven levels of waterfalls, spanning 1.2k.  The climb between the levels was decent, and kinda fun.  Thai people are pretty modest so the hairy guy in the Speedo was definitely a foreigner.  The Thai people mostly got into the waterfalls fully dressed, if at all.

Waterfall #2

There were fish in each of the pools which would come up and nibble on you.  It was more startling than painful, but still a little bit odd.  In some places (including Thailand, I think, but definitely Korea) women pay for this in salons.  It’s a treatment to remove dead skin, like a pedicure.

That little boy is going to be callous-free any second

In a couple of places along the way, there were shrines with brightly colored women’s dresses hung up.  I don’t know why, I’ll have to see if I can find out the significance.

One of the shrines

Made it! Waterfall #7

My view from the floor of the bus on the ride home

There are tons of scooters and mopeds, and lots of sidecars, like this one.  I’ve seen them mostly used for carrying goods, but occasionally people as well.

*Mystery fruit!  If anyone can help me identify id, I’d appreciate it.  The woman said it was Himalayan?

I think this is what I had the other day that I wasn’t wild about.  Guava?

The market tonight also had a sort of flea market component.  All sorts of stuff was being sold, but I mostly just cared about the food, as usual.  🙂

*Sweet potato puffs.  Reading the sign, I was expecting them to taste like sweet potatoes, but they didn’t. They didn’t taste potato-y at all, sweet or otherwise. They just tasted like little puffy chewy balls of dough, and although they were fried, they were still really light.  Kinda like a zeppole? but less fried tasting

I think this is the pancake the couple in my cooking class was talking about the other night.  She stretched out the dough, almost the way you toss a pizza, and put it on the griddle and filled it with scrambled egg, sugar, and chopped banana.  She then folded it over and flipped it.  I’m not sure if it was the dough or the egg or both, but it puffed up.  She topped it with sugar and condensed milk to finish it off.  It reminded me most of the gozleme I got in Turkey.

*I swear I’ve been walking a ton and am not going to come home weighing 400 pounds

The Thai version of Italian?

So yesterday morning I left Bangkok to head to Kanchanaburi, a small town on the River Kwai.  Because I’m not very bright, I decided to walk from the train station to the bus station in Bangkok where I needed to catch the bus. On the way I got lost/stuck in Queen Sirikit Park for longer than intended.  In 90*. While wearing two backpacks.  But at least it was pretty.

And there were elephants!

Everywhere! Get it?  🙂

I decided to pick up a snack for the bus ride so wandered into the 7-11 there at the station

I skipped the (chicken) hotdogs

*But decided to get a non-fat drinking fermented milk.  It’s a dutch mill delight! How could I not?

It tasted sort of like thin lemon yogurt, which I know sounds weird but was actually pretty tasty.  It was, like so many Thai foods, sort of tangy and sweet, all at the same time.

*Mystery pastries

I got some of these too, I’m not quite sure how to describe them.  I wasn’t really into them, more for textural reasons than an issue with flavor.

*Sponge cakes filled with banana cream

I saw these in the airport when I first landed, but didn’t buy them and have been regretting it since, but here they were again!  With free “Lepan Banana Gros Michel” banana pendant!  I can’t wait to put it on my cell phone case or whatever you’re meant to do with a banana pendant that comes free with pastries.

After the two and a half hour minibus ride, where I made the mistake of sitting near the door so every passenger could climb in and out over me, we finally arrived at Kanchanaburi.  I’d booked a guest house in advance, and decided to walk the 4k there, because I was already drenched. On the way, I passed this beautiful cemetery.

And this adorable puppy, which was chewing on a coconut, but started chewing on me when I stopped to pet him.

The guest house looked so lovely in the pictures, and had a great write up in my guidebook, but the bathroom in my room is less than picturesque:

You get what you pay for.

Not only does the bathroom double as the shower, but you need to supply your own toilet paper, AND there’s no flushing mechanism.  You have to use that maroon bowl to take some water out of the bucket and pour it down the toilet.  Now I really feel like I’m traveling!

After dropping my stuff I decided to walk to the famous Bridge over the River Kwai, the movie of which I’ve never seen.  A woman was selling clementines out of the back of her truck.

*Clementines (or something similar) 35 baht a kilo

Turns out the bridge is really beautiful, although not original, as the original was bombed by the allies in WWII.

The bridge is still active and has “safety platforms” for tourists to stand on if a train comes while they’re standing on it

I’d been seeing commercials for these gift baskets while I was on the Sky Train in Bangkok, and finally saw one in person.  I’d been so curious as to what they are, and it turns out, they’re chicken essence!  I guess that’s a big thing here, giving chicken essence as a gift?  They have them in every little grocery store.

Chicken essence gift baskets…?

All of the women’s facial creams advertise their whitening properties.  That could be a whole discussion but just wanted to mention it…

So, I’m going to admit my complete ignorance of the WWII situation here in Thailand, but apparently Japan occupied the country during the war. The Allied forces had cut off their original supply routes, so they decided to build a bridge in order to resupply their troops in Burma.  They forced 200,000 local people (Thai, Indian, Chinese, etc.) and 30,000 English, Australian, American and Dutch prisoners of war to build the bridge.  The original estimate for the time needed for the railway to be completed was 5 years, but when they decided to use forced labor, they readjusted their estimate to be 18 months.  They drove the men so harshly that it was completed in one year.  The conditions were horrible, and 100,000 locals and 16,000 POWs  died of starvation and disease.  There is a cemetery in town that was built to honor the foreigners, who lost their lives, and it holds the remains of nearly 7,000 POWs.  The cemetery itself is beautiful, and immaculately maintained.  All of the men were so young, and the inscriptions were some of the saddest I’ve ever seen.  I cried reading them.

The tomb inscriptions were the saddest I’ve ever seen

On a lighter note… I stopped to visit the cemetery on my way to the train station.  I didn’t manage to buy a ticket, but the trip wasn’t a total waste, as there was a night market just outside.

More delicious and exotic fruit, all served with salty sweet chili topping (40 baht)

*Dumplings made with rice? flour and stuffed with shrimp, scallions or some sort of green (a choy of some kind?) (30 baht)

I’m thinking because of the color they must be duck eggs?

*Everything tastes better on a stick, even mushrooms.  Especially if they’re wrapped in some bacon-like meat

Duck in many forms?

*Little baby omelettes with krab, mussel, or shrimp inside (6 for 25 baht)

*Delicious strawberries topped with some mixture of sugar, salt, and ?  They were great (30 baht)

*Baby pineapples, I got two of them and she just sliced them into quarters.  They were some of the best I’ve ever had.  They’re so young and sweet, you just eat the core. (20 baht each)

*Bananas grilled and served with a warm, sweet, coconutty sauce (5 baht per stick)

*Rose apples served with that sweet, salty chili topping.  They tasted kinda like a cross between an apple and a pear in texture. (40 baht)

Tomorrow I’m going to visit Erawan Waterfall, the real reason for my trip to Kanchanaburi

So Saturday night I found out about the Chatuchak Weekend Market, which, as you guessed, only happens on weekends.  It is the largest market in Southeast Asia, so of course I couldn’t miss it.  I took the Sky Train there, which was super clean, easy, efficient, and cheap.  They get about 200,000 visitors a day, 30% of which are foreign.  The place was so completely massive, I wandered around for hours and still only had the slightest sense of orientation by the end of it.  There’s a map, but it’s almost entirely useless because it doesn’t give you any sense of scale. The market sells literally everything, as you’ll see below.  The map has sections for “instant food,” “amulets,” “painting,” “animal food,” “creature,” and “cock fighting,” not to mention lots of more normal categories like “artificial flower,” “odds and ends” and “garden equipments.” I’m not quite sure of the difference between fresh food and fruits and vegetables, or between cooked food and instant food, but rice is important enough to get its own category.  After the market I headed back to the hostel to shower and rest for a bit, before heading to the Patpong Night Market and to some street vendors for dinner.

I’m going to try to include prices where I can, so you can get a sense of what things cost.  At the current exchange rate, $1 = 35 baht.  And just so you don’t think I’ve even more of a glutton than I actually am, I’m putting a star * next to the foods I actually ate, so you can tell them apart from the ones I was just eyeing.  🙂

My favorite thing about Thai food is the contrast.  I’ve always loved the mix of salty and sweet (chocolate covered pretzels, apples or bananas with peanut butter, sea salt caramel, etc.) And here, unlike in the US, savory food isn’t just savory, and desserts aren’t just sweet.  They all have a mix of flavors, so that a sweet dessert is topped with salty coconut, or a hot dog is rolled in a sweet crepe, instead of an American hot dog bun.  Pad thai, arguably Thailand’s most popular dish isn’t just noodles and a protein, it’s got a combination of flavors and textures: tangy tamarind paste, tart vinegar, spicy chili, crunchy peanuts, funky fish sauce, and sweet coconut sugar, among other things.  I’m lucky I’ve been walking for miles….

A random mini shrine on the street on the walk to the train

There are arrows marked on the ground at the Sky Train stops, designating where to stand, so that when the train comes in, the area is clear for people to get off, and explains where the lines of people waiting should enter.

Very

And miracle of miracles, Thai people actually use them!

Thai people queueing for the Sky Train

It’s lovely and orderly, which is completely different than subways in the US, or even the Thai streets

On the Sky Train

Random observation: Thai people don’t wear sunglasses.

Even on the way into the market there were stalls of all kinds, including an incredible looking row of food

Woman selling spring rolls and papaya salad (som tum) outside the market

A food stall’s “dining room”

From this distance the map looks kinda helpful

But when you look at it in detail, you can see how many tiny dots actually make it up each section

The market was really crowded, and sells literally everything

Baskets of all shapes and sizes

Soap of all shapes and sizes, including really lifelike mango soap (3 for 100 baht)

Celadon pottery. I wanted all of it!

There’s an entire section of “creatures” and they mean it, they have every pet you could think of.  A lot of vendors don’t allow photographs though.

The puppies were so cute it was painful!

Baby birds, still molting

One of a wide range of rodents

They had every kind of sea life you could imagine

Bearded lizards

Choose your own fish

Or just grab a prefilled bag of them

Tons of tiny turtles

They look like sunrises to me

Hopefully these were meant as food for pets, not people

Not pictured: three million other adorable puppies, dogs big enough to saddle, kittens, snakes, flying squirrels, sugar gliders, mice, rats, and various other unrecognizable rodents…

There was an entire section of pottery

Strands of handmade string lights

Little string critters of all kinds

*Hot dogs rolled in a sweet crispy crepe.

“Pomegranite” dessert called that for its appearance

And the milky stuff that goes with them?

*Mystery green fruit (unripe guava?) with chili flakes and sugar, one of the only things I’ve gotten that I didn’t enjoy (20 baht)

*Coconut ice cream, served in the shell with sweet red beans and sticky rice (40 baht)

Coconut shells and choices of topping

One of the many food vendors

Turns out those bugs might’ve been people food!

Millworms and crickets, and cockroaches, oh my!

Grubs, a protein filled snack!

More squid on a stick

A miniature food cart, being sold in the market

Also near the pet section, a massive store filled with dogs’ clothes

*Sweet mini crepes filled with marshmallow and salted coconut

*Coconut ice cream #2 (35 baht)

Everyone loves donuts

And potato chips

*Dinner part 1, wok-cooked omelette with sweet chili sauce over rice (40 baht)

My pad thai being cooked on a big flat top

*Shrimp pad thai, the finished product (70 baht)