Public transportation

ITI have actually drawn up a list of Cynthia's Travel Rules, complied last spring, but over the course of 40 years of travel. I think they're pretty good, too.And one of them is : take public transportation.

And by thus I don't mean go by metro, or by bus , but more than that, to take public transportation as a form of cheap entertainment. We have ridden many a city bus as a way to get off of our tired feet and to see something off of the tourist trail. Bus 69 in Paris is one if those fantastic rides, especially at night, when monuments are lit up!

When I was looking at the map of Bangkok the other day, I noticed a canal with little pictures of boats on it...aha, another potential boat ride! I asked at our hotel and they told me where the closest pier was. So, for the cost of a triple inflated taxi ride( hey, he needed the money- he just became a first time dad at 5 am!) we got to a small pier on the klong. Our driver thought it was hilarious that we didn't know, or particularly care ,where we were headed! And we didn't. When a boat came roaring up to the pier, we just jumped on- no time for photos! I was just glad I could be agile enough to hop on and off, and not trip on the blue plastic as one girl did. We all watched in horror as she was in a sort of suspended animation cartwheel onto the wooden bench.

Within seconds we roared off again, and the ticket taker clinging to the rails outside sold us a ticket for a few cents. We sped along the klongs, or narrow canals that had homes and businesses lining them all the way, with the occasional temple. When the waves got high and water threatened to splash in, a pulley system could be employed to raise the plastic " wall/ window". Very ingenious! We rode for about 20 minutes and decided that we would disembark and ride a boat in the opposite direction. As it turned out, everyone else got off the boat at that stop, too! So we just followed the crowds into a huge shopping mall. We had a good lunch at the food court, and jim got new lenses in his favorite reading glasses, in less than an hour. Cheap entertainment! 

It was an efficient food court system where you bought a card with any amt of money, then presented it to each individual food vendor. When you were done, you could bring the card back and the balance was refunded. This would be a great system for our Portland food carts! 

I had wanted to try the classic dessert of mango with sweet sticky rice, and it was delicious.

We discovered several malls close to our hotel, eventually. They are huge structures, often with 5 floors and two or three sub floors. One has a theme of around the world, so we toured the world from The Caribbean ( basement) through Rome, Istanbul ( accessories)&Paris , ending up eating in SanFrancisco, with movies on the top floor, which of course was Hollywood! 

As dopey as it may sound, food courts are a great place to eat, as the variety seemed endless and the food was fresh, often cooked to order.  It was tremendously crowed, too, so the locals know a good  thing. It had nothing of the dull sameness of our US food courts, more like a cleaned up version of street food. 

This is dessert. All kinds of toppings for shave ice , which we have seen all over Asia in various forms.

Also on the dessert aisle. Corn is very popular - on ice cream, too. Yum? 

I also visited a very upscale shopping center( these are all vertical, in high rises ) when I went in search of a new calendar for Jim, after he apparently lost his other one. Sad. 

The decor was beautiful.

But the music on that stage down there was anything but soothing...

I decided to treat myself to a lovely (and very expensive) tea and scones. The scones looked better than they tasted...but the atmosphere was a respite from bustling Bangkok. 

Finally I went back to the hotel to my " happy place".

I will leave you with one last photo of my favorite family in a Bangkok, where little sister joined her brothers.