Day 17 - I'd Pass on the Floating Market

May I add two more lessons to those learned in Bangkok?

Lesson No 4: What they say about the Floating Market is true.  

Yesterday, we got up at 6:30 to make a trip out to the floating market south of Bangkok.  Aside from an interesting food market we stopped at along the way, the 4 hours worth of driving, and 2 hours worth of ingesting long tail boat exhaust fumes was not worth it.  In fact, I'm not sure it was even worth getting out of bed for!  We walked along the flotsam and jetsam of tourist rubbish, most made somewhere else where labor is even cheaper than here, all the same from stall to stall. It was a bit depressing.  There really wasn't any craftsmanship to appreciate or enjoy-- only machine made purses, resin happy Buddhas, tea lights and the occasional phallus, just in case that was how you wished to remember the city.  But I also felt badly, being pulled along in our boat by the vendors in each stall lining the canal, all the while saying "no" or avoiding eye-contact as they asked me to stop and look.   "The economy is so bad.  No one wants to buy," a man said in Thai to our tour guide. The economy is bad enough.  At the same time, I can't think of a time where it was good enough to waste money on products that no one took the time or effort to think about whether it was worth selling in the first place.

That's why I am always happy to buy food - aside from the

obvious reasons.  There is something personal about it.  Someone took the time to make the little coconut pancakes, the fried banana fritters, the "dry" noodles with fishballs and young coconut juice.  I am happy to spend my tourist money of something personal, experiential, and something that I'll remember much longer that a natty "silk" pillowcase.

Lesson No. 5: Don't ever eat at a roof-top anything. 

And while local food can save a tourist trap from being a complete waste of time, sometimes it can just as easily go the other way.  We decided to eat at a roof-top restaurant recommended by our tour guide on our last night there.  Sixty-two stories above Bangkok, the scenery was nice.  The rest, however, was not.  Miserable "western-style cuisine,"  a see-and-be-seen vibe of old men with their red chests hanging out of a barely buttoned shirt.  Fishy scallops, a burger-like concoction of duck.  Shame on me really, for letting the last night get away from us.  I should have known better.