July 22 - Chatuchak

Today Felicia and I went to Chatuchak, the BIG weekend market in Bangkok, by ourselves.

FIRST, I needed to get over my fear. So I brought Felicia with me :o) We would need to get there by taxi. I figured that I should be able to get there no problem, the challenge would be getting home. This will be the 3rd and 4th times in my life that I'll be calling a taxi for myself by myself... Extra bonus: I don't speak Thai. Felicia is very excited that she can show me "the way out of Villa Arcadia to where the taxis are". The second taxi we approach will take us into town... it's about a 1/2 hour ride... for the equivalent of about US$9.00.

I have 2 goals on this outing: Check out the famous market, pick up souvenirs to take back the the states. Well, it turns out that this place it soooo huge you need to have a map if you've got any kind of shoping objective. I was only able to pick up a few things on my "to buy" list before Felicia was ready to call it quits. AND, it started to do that "downpour of rain in spurts" thing so it was getting MORE crowded as shoppers were trying to dodge into the covered portions of the market. Without knowledge of how the market was laid out I unintentionally take the LOONG way around to get to the taxi stand. Good thing I didn't have tons of shopping success to drag around with me.

Overall, it was a GREAT outing and I wished I had visited it earlier and more often. As my friend Ali would say, "Note to self...", I'll be sure to carve out special Chatuchak time on my next visit to Thailand.

This is where Felicia and I stopped for a SIT-DOWN lunch. After all that walking around it was worth spending a whopping US$10.00 to sit down and eat. :o)



Oh yeah! BTW, we did make it back from the market without problem. First of all it helped that G took the boys to the Central Bangna Mall which made it easier for me to tell the driver(instead of having to give turn-by-turn directions to the house). So after a short exchange of broken Thai, broken English, and Taxi-passenger sign language(to indicate, "yes, take the expressway") we were on our way.