Touring with BG

The chicken rice restaurant

Shophouses at Balestier Road

The hawker center at Golden Mile complex

This is what peanut soup looks like

The peanut soup stall

The Sultan Mosque at Kampong Glam

The Kuan Im Thong Hood Cho temple (I'll never memorize this name)

Culinary adventures - Chicken rice with BG

BG is a co-worker of Steve's who was born in Malacca and has lived in Singapore most of his life. He is, therefore, an authority on what to eat, and where to eat it. He also makes a great walking-tour guide!

We had been in Singapore for almost a month and still hadn't tasted the Singaporean national dish: Hainanese chicken rice (yes, it's actually Hainanese, but the Singaporeans claim it as theirs.) BG took us off the beaten path to a local restaurant in Balestier Rd, an area mostly known by its many lamp shops. Besides chicken rice, we tried pork mashed with salty fish and fish and crab meat soup. They were all very good, especially the rice in the chicken rice, which was heavenly in my opinion.

With our stomachs full, we took a stroll down the road and bought some sticky rice dumplings from one of the best rice dumpling shops in Singapore. Then we took the bus to Golden Mile Complex, where the Thai workers hang out in their free time and where we had peanut soup for dessert. I'm a huge dessert fan and I'd recommend peanut soup to anyone. Chinese desserts are typically lighter and not as sweet as their American (and Portuguese) counterparts, but it's really their delicate flavor that makes them so yummy. Peanut soup comes with dough balls filled with yam, red bean, sesame and peanut. You can choose one flavor or a mix of the four. My favorite was sesame.

Then we walked through Kampong Glam (the Arab quarter) towards Bugis and stopped to take a closer look at Parkview Square, an art deco building which would be more at home in Manhattan than in Singapore. At Bugis Village we strolled through stalls at the night market and took a peek at the Kuan Im Thong Hood Cho temple (Chinese) and the Sri Krishnan temple (Indian), before we finished our tour at the artist's neighborhood near the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station.

Assorted Bangkok shots

A typical Bangkok street

Grabbing a snack (satay) on the go

They have crowded open-aired markets and then they have this.

Bangkok apartments across the most luxurious mall

A frequent design on the temples' roofs

Tuk-tuks may lack air-conditioning and don't offer a lot of protection from the fumes, but they compensate that with a lot of personality.

One of Bangkok's signatures is the chaotic traffic. The king says hi.

Shopping and dropping

On Sunday morning we took the subway to the Chatuchat weekend market. After seeing the streets, were very surprised that the subway was extremely clean and new – it felt like we were back in Singapore!

The market is huge. It took us a while just to find the information center. The guide book said it was located on section 25, but we couldn’t find that section, even though we could see sections 23, 24 and 26. We even asked some people and no-one was sure. The truth is Chatuchat is a giant maze encompassing more than 800 stalls. When we finally found the information center, we were given a map. The people also warned us against pickpockets and showed us a bunch of wallets that had turned up empty.

I’d like to take the opportunity to mention that everywhere you go in Bangkok you find nice people willing to go out of their way to help you. If they don’t speak English, they’ll find you someone who does.

At Chatuchat you can find almost anything, from stylish clothes and accessories, handicrafts and household items, to furniture, artworks, and even puppies. And everything is so cheap, especially by western standards! (bargaining is expected) I honestly rarely give in to the shopping spree temptation, but if it weren’t for the limited time and how much we were able to carry back (we bought a bag for that purpose) I could have made a serious dent in the wallet…

On the way back we took the Skytrain (a sort of subway that runs above the city streets) to Siam square, for an altogether different kind of shopping. The malls at Siam square are even bigger and nicer than the ones in Singapore, and that’s saying a lot. One of them had the biggest supermarket I’ve ever seen, and everything there was gourmet. I wonder who shops there, considering that just across the street there are very modest houses and beggars on the sidewalk. It’s a very shocking contrast.

Tired of walking and shopping in Bangkok’s oppressive heat (it’s worse than Singapore) we made our way back to the hotel, repacked (we had to fit our market finds somehow) and left to the airport, hoping to be able to at least nap on the way back home. If only we had had time for another massage!

Calypso Cabaret

At the entrance

The show had plenty of beautiful ladies

No, this isn't a ugly woman. It's a guy cross-dressing as a Japanese lady. This part was really funny.

Who says bikinis are just for girls?

A relaxing evening

After touring the temples and the river all day, we though it was time for a traditional Thai massage. They pulled our limbs, cracked our fingers, twisted us into weird positions and it felt so good! We only had time for a quick dinner before we got our guide to take us to the Calypso Cabaret. It's a show where all performers are or were men at a point in their lives. The room was full with Westerners (men and women.) It's actually a pretty good show, with plenty of musical numbers and some funny parts too. And some of the girls are so gorgeous that it's hard to believe they weren't always female. We ended the night at the hotel bar, a hip new place mostly filled (not suprisingly) with Western men and their Thai girlfriends. Nancy swears she saw plenty of wedding bands on the guys' hands.

Lunch on the river

Eating alfresco

A view of the "restaurant"

Forget Malaysia; this is the real fresh fish, right out of the river

Cooking Phat Thai

We bought some cherry lookalikes from this lady

Local food, international drink

The ice-cream man

This floating market takes place on land

It's hard not to buy everything you see

Pictures from the water

We took a boat like this up the river and then through the Khlong Bangkok Noi canal to Thonburi

A temple on the Chao Phraya river

The big stupa at Wat Arun

Typical houses on the canal. I find it funny that they have satellite dishes

A gila monster; we saw an even bigger one peeking out of the water

This monk came to watch the boats go by

This has to be the cutest picture I took

People in Thonburi don't need to take the bus...

A temple on the canal

"Sacred" catfish: you can't fish them in this area, since they belong to the temple

An old rice barge

Up the canal to the old capital

It wasn’t planned, but our guide suggested we take a boat tour along the Chao Phraya River. We got our own traditional boat and went down the river before we got into one of the canals, the Khlong Bangkok Noi, which flows into the Chao Phraya from the old capital, Thonburi. This was by far the most unique and exhilarating experience of the whole trip.

The canal is long and there are wooden houses built all along it. You can see gila monsters, big catfish, soup merchants on their little rowboats, children taking a dip, and monks looking out from their temples. The not-so-clean water splashes around, the floating vegetation covers the water and some people wave as you pass by. There are all sorts of houses, from the very humble to the extremely luxurious.

Nancy and Joe hadn’t had breakfast, so halfway through the tour they were starving. This was a lucky strike, since our guide knew just the place to eat around there. On the weekends, there is a floating market and the locals come to eat on this huge barge where you can find phat thai, shellfish, noodle soups and fresh-out-of-the-river catfish. We sat at a low table on the floor and ordered from almost every stand. Towards the end of lunch, the ice-cream man came by on his boat and we bought some coconut sorbet with peanuts. It was the cheapest and most delicious meal we had during our trip. Needless to say, we were the only non-Thai people on the barge…

Wat Benchamabophit

The temple's entrance

The temple's façade

The main altar in the temple, with a picture of the current king as a monk on the right

An unusual depiction of a fasting Buddha, in the Ghandara style

A Buddha in the traditional Sukothai style

Wat Pho

A guard at the entrance of the temple

Now that's a huge Buddha

The Buddha's head

One of many paintings on the interior walls of Wat Pho

One of the Buddha's soles, decorated with mother-of-pearl

Dropping pennies in a long row of pots

Wat Traimit

The 5.5 ton gold Buddha


Offerings for the Buddha

Three Buddhas covered in gold leaf

We got pretty lucky with our fortune, I guess

The Thai flag with the temple's roof in the background

Young monks eating their meals