I woke up at 10:45 this morning, convinced that it was hours earlier. But it wasn't, so this morning the cold shower was a warm welcome to today. I also hold up my first taxi (the first of many firsts, I presume) and let him take me to the Hua Lampong trainstation where I buy my 2nd class, low, AC nighttrain-ticket to Chang Mai for sunday for 841 Bhat. Remember the Tourist Info lady? Ha!
Walked into China Town, and trust me, the West-Kruiskade (Chinatown of Rotterdam) has nothing on this place. I was excited when I discovered shoe-street, found a lovely fake-leather, pink bag at bag-street, had a giggle at everything-made-of-paper-street, but was more than ready to leave China Town when I got lost in chickenfeet, dried shrimp and all-the-intestent-you-can-eat-AREA. Yeah, that put me off my breakfast and my lunch.
Being Dutch, you have to show the locals your cycling-skills, and I made my country proud today... The narrow backstreets of an hitherto undiscovered China Town (motorcycle&tuktuk-parts-street!!) proved somewhat of a challenge, but we made it, in one piece. We also took the ferry to 'old town', where the main attraction is white people in shorts on bikes, yelling 'hello, hello' back to the toddlers (daycare is 20 Bhat per child per day! Incredibly cheap, but they don't seem to learn anything other than to smile and wave....) and high-fiving them in the passing.
I have no intention in turning this into a political blog, cause it's not, mainly because I don't know much about politics other then when I'm supposed to turn up to vote whatever the 'Kieswijzer' tells me to. What I do know is that there is police, military people and riot vans everywhere. My bag got searched when I entered the MBK shopping mall (yeah yeah yeah, I also went shopping and saw a movie today). They frowned at my 'hartige Sultana' that was left in my bag. And on the way back, my taxi had to slow down so that an armed guard could check it with a flashlight. The bizarre thing is that tourist-info-lady told me that everyone is fleeing the city, because of the protests, and, bicycle-tour-lady said that everyone from surrounding provinces are coming to Bangkok, because of the protest.
Go figure. Ah well. Hopefully bridge over river Kwai tomorrow.
ps. About that movie: it included a Karaoke version of the Thai national anthem, nobody sang along though. Very interesting to see, unimaginable in Holland.
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