All over Bangkok, locals ride on motorcycles and mopeds. At every red light, you see an army of them, because they drive through the line of traffic in order to be at the front when the light turns to green. Sita and I decided to utilize this method of transportation, and it was well worth it! Normally traffic is stop and go but when you're on a motorcycle here, you don't stop. If the cars in front of you are slowing down, you just whip around them or between them. Everyone actually uses their horns correctly... They give a little "beep" as they come up along side you, so that you know they're there. In America, a beep means "You're an idiot, get out of my way."
We took the bikes into the city to meet up with our group to go to the floating market. It turns out that there are a few markets.... Some real ones, and then the one that the tourists are taken to. The whole thing is an enormous tourist trap. Everything sold there had souvenir written all over it. You get to see how the markets operate though, which was nice. The stalls, or booths, are accessible by boat, and everyone cruises through the canal while looking at the wares. Hawkers have hooks on a pole that they use to reach out and grab your boat, if they even suspect that you were interested in something.
One important thing I learned is that they mark the items up ridiculously. A woman wanted 400 baht for an item which is the equivalent of $12.50. A man in our boat offered 100 baht ($3.3) and as the woman brought the price down, he never came up. He just kept saying 100 and our boat operator would start to leave. The woman got frantic trying to make the sale and finally sold it to him for 100 baht. Now, economics say that if she weren't making any money, she wouldn't have sold the item. I was flabbergasted at the markup on stuff! I know to barter in countries like this, but from 12.5 bucks to 3?
As we were leaving, a small booth indoors with teak products caught my eye. I decided to buy a hand made set of the game "Jenga." The woman wanted 550 baht ($17) and I got her to do 220 ($7). I was quite proud of myself!
On the way back to Bangkok, we stopped at a snake exhibit and watched men avoid the bite of very poisonous snakes, one of which happened to be a cobra. The guy was amazing... One second, the snake is trying to kill him, and the next, he's able to calm it down with slight, rhythmic movements of his head. It was quite impressive.
While there, I was able to hold a beautiful python. He seemed comfortable on me, while on other tourists, he was moving all around trying to get down.
Instead of taking us back to the hotel, we had the driver take us to "downtown." Here, that word doesn't really mean what you would think. We ended up in the hustle and bustle of rush hour on super busy streets, surrounded by malls. We've had so much rice and noodles, that we are starting to get tired of it. We saw an A&W and decided to grab dinner there instead of from a street vendor. I know, I know... So "American."
As we were wandering around, making our way back to the sky train (the train runs above all the cars), I started getting cramps, and quickly realized that I was dehydrated. I bought a bottle of water and on the ride back towards our hotel, I sipped and sipped until I felt better. I still had a killer headache, and we ended up just staying in the hotel room for the rest of the evening.
I'm not used to having to "make sure" I drink water. I mean, I'm from a hot part of the US, so it's not like I'm a newbie when it comes to staying hydrated! Somehow, I guess I just wasn't thinking about it, and when almost the whole day out in the sun without drinking anything!
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