Saturday, December 23, 2006

The Adventure Weekend - Part I


spotted dog, originally uploaded by Dianthus.

*Posting will be slow for a little while. The earthquake that hit Taiwan this week, damaged some of the regions communication lines (mainly internet). The internet has slowed to a crawl. It's like we're back in the days of dial-up.

This weekend we were both feeling that it was time to be a bit more adventurous. Both D and I were curious about the Floating Markets that we had heard so much about. We checked out our various travel books and looked at maps, but nothing seemed to be in Bangkok. Since we are in a hotel with a very nice and very helpful staff, D suggested we ask the desk about a guided tour. Neither one of us are particularly good “tourists”, we typically shun any sort of tour or tourist activity. We had decided on Friday that we would go on Saturday morning to visit the boys, since we hadn’t seen them all week. We were both missing them terribly. Prior to our departure to the kennel, we checked with the hotel desk regarding tours and they handed us a brochure chock full of different trips. Many of them looked interesting, but we settled on one that took us to the Damnern Saduak Floating Market & Rose Garden. The Floating Market is around 110 kilometers (70 or so miles) from Bangkok. Both D and I were excited at the prospect of getting out of the city for a bit, since I have never been anywhere else in Thailand and D has only been to Phuket. The trip started early in the morning, so the hotel staff arranged for us to do the trip on Sunday, Christmas Eve. That left us with plenty of time on Saturday to visit the boys. It was so nice to see them, and they were so excited to us too. The spotted dog seems to be getting over his coolness towards me, but still was letting us know how displeased he is with the situation. We spent the afternoon dorking around and tackling our mountain of laundry. In the spirit of adventure, we decided to check out a new development not too far from our hotel. It was unfortunately not near any of the Skytrain stations, so we asked the (so helpful!) front desk if they knew where it was and if they could get us a taxi. They ended up taking us in the hotel’s van, that usually runs people to the Skytrain and Underground stations! So nice! We walked around the development (which felt very Western) for a little while and browsed the bookstore. We settled on having dinner at this combination Vietnamese and Chinese restaurant. Both D and I had thought the Vietnamese sounded good. We decided to share a banana blossom & chicken salad, D ordered lemongrass chicken with rice and I had a Ban Hoi, which is rice noodles, fresh lettuce, Thai basil (or mint) and choice of meat (I settled on beef). You get to mix up all the ingredients with a delicious sweet/vinegary sauce. So fresh and tasty, I could probably eat it every day. I ended up eating the banana blossom salad, which they had neglected to add on the menu that it had shrimp in it! After dinner, we walked around for a bit and then hopped in a taxi, and back to the hotel for an early bedtime. We had our big adventure tomorrow!

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