Bangkok Day 5 - April 10

I think jet lag is officially a thing of the past as we have to be up at 5:30 and that is a bit painful. Our tour this morning is to a floating market outside of Bangkok. The drive there takes about an hour. Once we arrive we board long boats for a 20 minute ride through narrow canals to the market. On either side of the canals are homes on stilts. Some are fancy-shmancy and others are very basic. Every so often a row boat travels past selling fruit of some type. The market is very touristy and we don’t buy anything other than deep-fried bananas which are quite delightful. These are being made right on the spot by a man and a young boy. I’m not sure if they speak English, but tell you the price on a calculator. I didn’t bargain, but I’m sure I could have gotten a better price – still cheap.

I do of course take advantage of their ‘facilities’. The public facilities I have experienced in Asia so far (and of course this experience is very limited) have been phenomenal! Extremely clean, I have only had to pay once, most have paper (but I’ve been around the block a time or 2 and know to pack my own) and ALL, yes ALL have seats. I know, I know tomorrow may bring a whole new ‘going’ experience, but I thought it bore mentioning how delighted I was to be able to ‘go’ in such wonderful conditions. It could be of course that people just don’t ‘go’ here very much.

On the way back to Bangkok we stop at another temple, have lunch at the hotel and board another bus for the 1.5 hour ride to the ship. I suspect we will have a few long bus rides in our future…many of the sights we will visit along this cruise are actually in land quite a bit.

fruit seller

Once we board the ship things are exactly as we remember them from being on the Seven Seas Voyager last year. We are in a different cabin this year, but really can’t tell.