Our last full day in Bangkok took us to Pratunam Market which is  Bangkok’s largest wholesale/retail market.   This crazy market was on either side of some narrow streets as well as inside some buildings.  It was shear chaos and quite dangerous with motorcycles (spewing fumes) going through the narrow isles of clothing inside the buildings!  It certainly was an interesting experience; but the clothing was poor quality.  Having custom clothes made in Hoi An, Vietnam turned out to be a very wise decision after all.

We then  went on to China Town since we never made it there on our first day.   It was a very busy and vibrant section of Bangkok and another “experience” not to be missed.  Stores, street food vendors and people crowd this 1 kilometer strip of land.  It is a culinary feast with loads of street vendors cooking up some wonderful looking Thai food.  Once we saw them cleaning the pots, pans and dishes (no paper plates) on the street, we were very reluctant to indulge in the China Town street food.

We then worked our way over to The Golden Mountain temple (Wat Sake) which sits high above the city.  The real star of this temple is the manmade “Golden Mount” on the top of the temple.  We took the many steps to the top where there was a fantastic 360 degree of the city.  We decided to hail a cab rather than walk back to the hotel due to  a very black sky.  The taxi cab driver quoted us 400 baht ($11.36 USD) rather than a typical price of between 68-75 baht ($2.13).  Wow!  Another potential scam.

We decided to pass on a gourmet restaurant for dinner and, instead, visited a restaurant that had a huge waiting line (all Asian/Thai folk) outside the night before.  Because we wanted to have a real Thai food  experience with the natives, we opted to forgo one of the other top 10 restaurants in the city.  It was probably the worst meal that we had in 6+ weeks!  A cross between fast food and a cheap sit-down restaurant with really poor service led us to the street venders after the meal for fantastic barbequed squid.

Leaving for Melbourne on Tuesday via Kuala Lumpur.