Almost forgot, yesterday having breakfast at Macca’s we noticed white sheets with Thai writing facing the huge roundabout at Democracy Monument. The police turned up, got their photo taken with the signs, clearly it’s not saying confrontational stuff like “Thai Police Are Pigs”, but maybe they say ” Aussie Blokes – eat Thai food or go home!” . Why do we eat Maccas for breakfast? Because Hotel Siam Champs Eleesee don’t really do a decent breakfast, and Thai breakfasts don’t do it for me, or TMM. Yet.

Today we have a tour booked via Trip Advisor yesterday – Cost $47 each, to go to the railway market south of Bangkok and the Damenoen Saduak Floating Market. The mini bus turns up on time and the trip is consolidated somewhere near Chinatown to 10 people. There are no other Australians, and Dale is the second oldest on the trip (figure that out), there are couples from Italy (Rome), Singapore, Spain, Germany and I think England. Its a long drive out of Bangkok and a short coffee stop at a roadside stop where we get robbed by Starbucks for coffee and muffins, then onwards to the train station to get the train to the markets where the stalls are on the railway track,

The old diesel train picks us up and we are close to the Gulf of Siam, so there are salt beds everywhere across the lowlands of the coastal plain as well as fish farms. as we roll into the town the stall holders pull their awnins back and the train rolls through the market to the station. Fascinating, and most of the stalls are proper local food stalls selling vegetables, fish, spices as well as the usual poo pants etc to sell to tourists. Its still steaming hot but worth the time just to see this.

The next stop is the Damenoen Sabuak Floating markets, not so busy now as Covid affected the tourism part of of the market. The coconut icecream from the lady who pulled her boat int our boat is beautiful, worth the 60 baht cost.

The trip back to Bangkok in the airconditioned van is very quiet, everyone is sleeping, Thailand siesta time. We arrive back at the depot near the Bangkok Riverside shopping mall, like IconSiam over the river only artier and a bit cheaper. We procure a local ferry for 16 baht each to get us back to Phra Athit pier, then its a quck walk back to hotel, interrupted only phone calls from Dubbo and a stop at McDonalds for an ice cold soft drink.

Our tour group meets at 6 for a meet and greet and to get some administrtive stuff out of the way. Its a big group of 14, from Perth, Melbourne, Germany, Sydney, Dublin, Florida and of course Dubbo and Cobar. Our tour leader is Naa, a lovely Thai woman who is 61 but looks younger and used to be a school teacher. Dale and I pinpoint the troubled ones early and will work a plan to minimise exposue to them.

As we prepare to go to a dinner as a group the storms finally break, after days of buid up it pours down for hours and is still raining ith lightening and thunder.

There has been some comments from my fellow traveller about the status of my memory at times, small important things (to him) mainly, useless stuff I can remember. I remind him of his genetics and that he has missed the target more than a few times. Conversation discontinued.

Tomorrow we see some more of Bangkok and tomorrow evening we are on the overnight train to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand

Ciao for now – Pauolo