March 29, 2017

The hotel we are staying offers a buffet breakfast for 250 baht per person (almost $10.00). We knew we could get a cheaper breakfast close by and got a full breakfast for 240 for the two of us.

Today\’s task was to find bike boxes so that we can pack the bikes ready for the flight to Seoul, Korea on Monday. There are supposed to be dozens of bike shops. We found three within 4 kms of the hotel and headed out after breakfast to find them.

The first bike shop Velo Thailand had a lady who spoke very good English. The shop was more of a rental and repair bike shop. She explained that most of their boxes had been taken in the first half of the month and they didn’t have any left. They only had a couple of wider boxes, which may be an issue on the plane. She suggested we continue looking and offered to take our name and email if she did find a couple of boxes for us.

We thanked her for her help and headed out to the next store. We found a book shop and we were able to buy a Bangkok map. This helped us find the other bike shops. We found the store but it was closed. Apparently, a lot of the bike shops do not open until the afternoon and stay open until 9:00 p.m.

We were getting hot and frustrated. The temperatures are unbearable in the high 30’s with a “real feel” of 40 degrees. We become sweaty blobs as soon as we leave our air-conditioned room.

As we were looking for the third bike shop and looking at our map, an older fella came up to us. He explained that there was some kind of Buddhist holiday and a lot of places were closed. There is a scam where tuk tuk drivers will tell you that the place you want to go to is closed and will take you somewhere else where they are open, they get a kick-back for taking you there. We tried to explain to the man that we were looking for a bike shop. He told us it would be open at 2:00 p.m. but we could take a boat ride for free today, because of this “holiday”.

A tuk tuk driver arrived and said he would take us to this Tourist Information centre and the ferry dock for 10 baht (0.38 cents). It was a hard sell. We eventually gave up and took the tuk tuk but told him to take us to the hotel about 3kms and then back to the boat ferry another 4 kms. I think we were being scammed, but because we told the tuk tuk driver to take us to the hotel, wait for us and then to the ferry. I think we won. The whole trip cost us 20 baht and Ralf gave the tuk tuk driver a tip.

The tuk tuk driver took us to a ferry dock where a man was waiting he said the ferry would cost us 2000 baht ($77.50)! Special price! We walked away, 200 hundred metres down the road was the proper ferry dock where we could buy tickets on the Tourist boat a “get on and off” boat for 150 baht ($5.18) or a one-way trip for 40 baht ($1.55)!

We could also have taken a Thai boat which was cheaper but didn’t have the English speaking person on board announcing what you were seeing along the water. We were going to spend a day on the river taking in the sights, this was a cheap way to do that.

We abandoned looking for bike boxes, and headed to Chinatown on the 40 baht boat. We spent about two hours wandering down the narrow alleyways of Chinatown.

We haven\’t seen this site very often in South East Asia, a drunken man asleep on the sidewalk.

The river is a very busy waterway with every conceivable water craft you could imagine, from big barges to touristy boats to fast \”dragon\’ boats all zipping up down and across the waterway.

We took the Tourist Boat back up the river and got off about 500 metres from the street where our hotel is located.  As we went up the river, the announcer told us what Wat we were passing and any other interesting information.  We may visit a couple of the Wats, but we have seen alot of Wats, we will see how much time we have left.

Dinner tonight was street food, in Khao San Road. Khao San Road is a popular tourist place for street food, restaurants and street vendors.  Occasionally you will see a street vendor taking off down a side street when they spot the police coming down the street.

I had my favorite papaya salad and stir-fried tofu with rice, Ralf had Massaman Curry.  We could have had bugs!  We opted to take a photo for 10 baht.  I think she was making more money from the photos than from anyone actually eating the bugs!

Rambuttri Road is also a popular area, a little less commercial – no McDonalds on Rambuttri Road. 

However, they have these cool VW vans that are decked out as a bar.  This one has a large screen TV in the back.

Tomorrow we are going back to Velo Thailand we are going to ask them if they can use the boxes they have and tape them to make a decent box for packing. Velo Thailand also do a packing service, so we are going to ask them to pack the bikes for us.