MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2016
In the morning, we stumbled upon another flower market and then we walked around an amulet market. This was kind of cool to see. There were lots and lots of amulets for sale and they were different too. Most of them had Buddha on it.
Today, we went to the Jim Thompson House. Jim Thompson was an American and he was stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam War . Anyways, life brought him to Thailand and he absolutely fell in love with the country. He loved Thailand so much so that he moved his life to the other side of the world. He had a house built and lived the rest of his life in Thailand, while contributing to the Thai silk industry. His death was very mysterious in that he was traveling and just disappeared at age 61.
His house was then turned into a museum of sorts. There are guided tours in English and there is an entrance fee. I think it was 200 THB. You need to join a tour in order to see the house, There’s no free wandering in the house. It’s also required that everyone take off their shoes as well. The tours run pretty frequent.
I think it’s worth visiting. It was a good change of pace from all the temples and Buddhas.
Today is also Chinese New Year. So, we figured we would go to Chinatown and see if there were any festivities going on for this rather famous Asian holiday.
And indeed there were. Streets were closed and there were policemen everywhere clearing a path for a parade that just went through. We could not move, but just be carried by the crowd. It was packed. After the parade ended, some room cleared up only for the center lane to be overtaken by vendors selling various knick-knacks. We found a place to eat and ordered take out because the wait for seating was too long.
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| This guy was just selling all sorts of Barbie dolls on the street. |
We walked to the end and back on both sides. It was pretty exciting, but we were both eager to lose the Turkish man who had decided to follow us and try and talk English to us.
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| Year of the Monkey so monkeys everywhere! |
One of the downs about being an English teacher in a foreign country is when people ask what I do. I answer honestly and say I am an English teacher and they respond with, “I’m trying to learn English. You can teach me.” As much as I love helping people out, keeping up a conversation in English with a Turkish man who spoke little English was not my idea of fun. Needless to say, there is always a place and time for things.
We tried to find a tuk tuk back to our hostel but all of them seemed to want to rape us with the tourist/foreigner price. I strongly believe the locals are not paying the price they are asking us to pay.
Steps Walked: 23,496
