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| Street Food Cart |
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| Room @ Citin Pratunam |
We walked down to the place. It looked like a gift shop. Inside there was a counter and behind that the exchange rates were displayed. They were offering 33 THB against a dollar which was fairly good. We got 100 dollar exchanged. It was pretty smooth process. They don’t ask for any identity of even validate the currency notes. With expressionless faces they take the dollar and give you the equivalent bhats in less than 30 seconds, no questions asked. Wow! And to think of I was carrying a cartload of Xeroxes as id proofs.
We also noticed that the shop was selling SIM cards as well. I had enabled international roaming on my phone while travelling from India just to be extra sure that we remain connected to our home even if there is a delay in getting the local SIM. But that was a mistake. SIM cards are so cheap in Thailand that you really need not enable international roaming. The call charges are also pretty much affordable plus the 3G is super fast. We ended up not consuming all the call time the card offered as we had rationed the calls back to home initially.
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| Night Market |
After we got the SIM and exchange we were at peace to roam around the night market. Pratunam is mainly a shopping district and a very popular destination with the Indian tourists. If not for the banner and hoardings in Thai one would actually think they are in any Indian market. Many places like the Indra Square was brimming with Indian sellers and Indian tourists, mainly Guajaratis. There were endless maze of small alleyways packed with thousands of fashion stores, and they are so cheap because most of them actually sell at wholesale rates. These shops offer t-shirts, jackets, dresses, jeans, shorts, shoes and accessories, including many fakes. So you need to bargain a lot to get the right price. We saw many tourists carrying a type of wheeled bag, similar to luggage bags in the shopping area. Initially we thought they were luggage bags only but later understood that they were being used to stuff the shopped goods. Can you imagine how shopping crazy people often this place that they need luggage bag sized bags to stuff their loot :) !
We were not looking for clothes and accessories shopping but something which would be unique to this place that we could carry back home. Most of the I love Thailand printed T-shirts are also sold in India in any wholesale market. My suggestion would be not to spend on the clothes as, the quality is also compromised since the price is low.
The main road was brimming with like thousand people at the same place. At places it seemed like elbowing thought he crowd was the only option we could move forward. Added to this was the intensive heat and humidity. It was like only 10 minutes from hotel, my makeup came off due to the sweat. We were sweating profusely, almost like we were just out of the shower. Take along a couple of hankies with yourself just to be fully armed against the sweat. Initially it was pretty discomforting. But everyone was in the same state and still we didn’t see anyone care about it. Soon we also got used to it.
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| Vibrant Lemon Juice |
We crossed the Baiyoke Tower II on our way, 300 meters and 88 stories, it is the tallest and one of the most distinctive monument in Bangkok. We kept walking towards the main road by asking people for direction. We wanted to go to the Big C supermarket, as I had heard it was good for shopping. Well so was the many other malls like Palladium, Indra and others but we were already late and didn’t have much time to check out all the popular malls in the area.
There are different markets in Pratunam based on the time of the day. Morning markets, day markets, night markets etc. But throughout the day you can see some sort of markets open to entertain the tourists. When we walked towards Big C, we saw some shops closing their shutters at 6 PM itself while at other places shops were just opening. It was kind of amusing.
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| Street Food |
Though it was hot, but we loved the walk. Once we reached the main road the crowd diminished. One thing we noticed in Bangkok was the color of the Taxis – pink, orange, purple, yellow, green- name the colour and you would have a taxi in that colour. That was a pleasant change from the yellow-black ones we were so used to in our country. Later I read about it and learnt that there is a colour coding applicable for these taxis - “The single-color are company taxis, personal taxis in cooperation or alliance and rental company taxis. These color include bright green, bright sky blue, red, orange, yellow, blue, pink, purple, violet and tan. The bi-colored taxis are in 3 kinds including yellow-green, red-blue and yellow-orange. The yellow-green are the personal private taxi. The red-blue are the rental taxi. The yellow-orange are the company taxi”. We also saw the famous tuk tuks, which was something similar to our autos or totos of Kolkata.
On way we came across a street seller selling hats. Since from next day our beach vacation was starting hence we both needed hats. We tried out many hats and finally settled for two of our choice at 150 BHT each. Happy with our first purchase we kept walking. In distance we could see the neon lights of Big C mall. After a while we crossed a long line of open air street restaurant under the flyover. The sitting arrangements were very basic but the place was buzzing with people. The food aroma around this place made us hungry but it was not yet time for dinner so we walked on. We decided we will have dinner at this place only.
We reached Isetan supermarket in front of it we saw two temple like monument in front of it with Vishu like idol. We had also seen ganapati idols at places. People were praying in front of the idols and lighting incense sticks. We took a few snaps and moved on. We came across another cluster of street shops. We tried on a couple of shades and some random trinkets just for fun.
There was also a stretch of shops which were selling different fruits, fishes, jewelries. Thailand has so many types of fruits to offer. Some of them very new to us like the Mangosteen, Rose apple, Durian or Rambutan. They resembled some of our fruits but tasted different. I tasted only Dragon fruit and Thai Oranges while in Thailand. Both were good.
My mother had told me that people usually buy gold or silver from Bangkok as they are very cheap. There was a couple of shops in this market selling silver. But we were in doubt about the authencity of the metal hence decided to skip.
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| Silver Jewelry |
“Is it really worm fry or something?” I almost exclaimed in a horrified note. But didn't even wait for the answer as I looked away, before people started hitting me for questioning their food choices :D
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| Big C |
Big C is nearly 1 Km from Citin Pratunam. But the multiple pit stops we made made it look like we had come a long way. We bought a couple of cute jute boxes from a street shop for gifting.
Finally we entered the Big C mall. Till now we had forgotten that there was any kind of weather apart from hot. The moment we entered the mall it appeared as if we had entered the heaven. The gush of cold air from the central air-conditioning felt unreally soothing. All the tiredness vanished and we walked with renewed vigour into the shops. We came across several gift shops. One of the particular gift shops had a nice collection. I selected some fridge magnets which is almost a ritual with me whenever I visit any new place. There are many fridge magnets on my fridge from different places which talks about all the good times we had in those places. We brought a set of key chains and nail cutters as gifts for our relatives. There were beautiful wooden dolls also in the shop, I particularly liked the cat dolls but the price was very exorbitant. Hence we didn’t buy them. The old lady at the shop gave us nice discounts after we kept bargaining. We wouldn’t budge without buying in the bargained price and she would not relent. But at the end she gave us the things at our desired price and we promised to come back again.
It was already pretty late by then and shops were closing down in the mall. We saw an escalator going up. We went towards it to go to next floor. A lady stopped us before the escalator. She was offering strips of paper with some herbal moisturizing cream trials. We took two of them and went up the escalator. We applied the cream while going up and were mesmerized by the amazing scent of the cream. We thought of checking it out again while coming down.
The supermarket was situated in the upper floor. The look and feel of the supermarket reminded me of the American Walmart or Costco supermarket. It was huge. The collection of items was exhaustive, especially food items, preserves, sauces, cosmetics, ranges of alcohol etc. I had made up mind to buy as many Thai spices and preserves as I could hence it appeared like a treasure trove to me. My situation was almost like a kid in a candy shop, whatever I was picking to take a look seemed interesting and I was almost squealing with joy at the wide options I was seeing in front of my eyes. One is really spoilt for choices in every section. But we didn’t buy anything that day as we thought about the weight constraint in Air Asia, which was our flight for the next day to Krabi. We simply browsed through the sections and made a mental note of what all we were going to buy during the return journey to Bangkok after three days. This super mart might not appeal to people looking for budgeted clothes and accessories but it fitted our requirement to the T.
We came out of the floor and headed for the area where we had met the lady who gave us the cream trials. But seemed like her shop was closed. So we thought of coming back when we were in Bangkok. By 9:30 the mall was almost having a deserted look apart from the super mart area. We came out and headed for the open air restaurant we had come across before.
The restaurant area was still brimming with people. And after some wait only we could get a table. It was hot and humid again and the restaurant had installed fans near the tables which made it a bit bearable. The menu was very exhaustive and we were confused like hell what to take and what not. We decided to go with something whose name was familiar to us. Seafood Tom yum soup looked familiar. We wanted some rice to go with it so we asked the girl attending our table about rice.
She looked at us quizzing and repeated “Rice?”
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| The food |
We were so exasperated at their expression that we didn’t know how to explain it to them. Then by chance I asked “Fried Rice?” A wide smile spread across her face as she heard something familiar “Fried Rice , yes yes we have” she said.
After the scrumptious dinner we were filled to the throat almost. The walk back to the hotel was really required to digest some of it. The shops along main roads were already closed so it was kind of deserted but e didn’t feel scared walking alone. We saw the trash collecting trucks were collecting the trash during night itself.
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| Tender Coconut Drink |
We retired to the room soon after. Coming back to AC was a relief. We changed quickly and went to bed watching some Thai comedy show. The main tour was about to begin from the next day.
