This morning I decided to run to the flower and food market when I got up around 5. Curiously, immediately prior to this trip I was vying for the queen of snooze setting 3, sometimes 4 alarms and snoozing them all. Maybe it was fellowship fatigue? Or just I have been training too long? On this trip however, I haven't even needed an alarm. I have woken up at five oh something every single morning, which is either the longest case of jet lag in the history of the world or something else? Maybe it is such excitement about what the day is going to bring sleeping is an impossibility? No complaints here. It has served me well and the few beach mornings I decided to sleep in, I was able to command myself back to sleep.
The market was great (but remember I LOVE MARKETS). Busy. Reportedly it is the one lots of restaurant food in Bangkok comes from. Asian markets have a very particular smell that is unforgettable. It isn't unpleasant but it isn't the smell you are looking for in a candle either. The fact that it isn't horrific is nothing short of astounding. I mean fish sauce + durian (I still cringe every time I see it. If you read my Vietnam adventure you will remember durian is the fruit that tastes like onion custard and is illegal to keep in hotel rooms because it smells so badly. It is also the fruit I had to finish in a market in Hue, Vietnam because wasting it would have been rude. Shudder.) + all kinds of fish and other animals + hard working humans should equal noxious
On the run back I was stopped by an Australian woman asking wear she should run. I showed her my phone picture of my plotted course. On trips I have to repeatedly remind myself that free maps are oddly never to scale.
At the end of my run I looked for a watermelon shake. Why mess with amazing? And was unable to find a shake maker in my neighborhood, however, when I came down for breakfast the official juice of the day was watermelon. My love for this hotel was exponentially heightened. Breakfast was great. Fresh spring rolls and massaman curry with a fresh pancake (that was more like a croissant smashed flat).
I took the boat down to Chinatown to see it during the day. At the dock there are a ton of pigeons and a ton of fish. Apparently this a favorite spot for monks and children to give their old bread.
I found dim sum street food (pork bun, shumai, shrimp dumpling, and green tea dumpling) for lunch plus a green tea roasted rice "best drink for your health" (it tasted like normal green tea to me). Chinatown was bustling. I ended up in the fabric section and thought, "Wow it would be fun to make something like an operating room hat out of some elephant fabric." It was at this moment I discovered that I was in the wholesale section and that even through it was two dollars a yard it wasn't so good when you have to buy the whole bolt. I spent some time in the notions area of this market. They were unbelievable. Any thing you could possibly imagine to be sewed on was available. I should have taken photos.
Next up was the medical museums, which I tried to talk myself out of but I was just too curious. The forensic medical museum, anatomical museum, and parasite museum are all found on the Siriraj hospital campus.
Siriraj hospital is the oldest and largest hospital in Bangkok, the largest hospital in Thailand as well as the main teaching hospital. It has over 2000 beds, sees more than 1 million outpatients per year, and takes 250 medical students and 100 residents every year. It also has an Au Bonne Pain. The hospital was founded in 1888 and the medical school in 1890. There was a lot of security so I got "lost" and found the medical school dormitories, tennis courts and swimming pool. The grounds of the hospital were massive.
The anatomical museum has lots of babies in various disease states and a lot of Siamese twins. All real specimens. The rest of this branch of the museum has all of the organs in different states of dissection and then different cuts of the human body with people's pictures over them. I assume that the people smiling down are in fact the people who are now in specimen. They also showed different disease processes in a whole hosts of organs. This was a flashback to my anatomy and pathology courses in medical school (with the exception of the babies). This museum wing is on the same floor as the anatomy labs for the medical school here.
The forensic medicine museum was as disturbing as its title suggests. Graphic pictures and specimens of the maimed and wounded in addition to several whole bodies of rapists and murders preserved. Yikes.
Last but certainly not least is the parasite museum (which for the record I had decided not to go to. It is not only not a separate admission but you walk through it to get out of the museum). If you would like to skip to the paragraph, I will sum it up for you: have you been in Asia more than 6 hours? You probably have parasites. Enjoy your stay!
On entering this room you are greeted by plastic food replicas of everything you have eaten in the past two weeks followed by lots of plastic beautiful looking fish. The rest of the museum is dedicated to each individual parasite; how you get it, what it does to you, and how you treat it. Pretty much eat street food (or get bitten by a mosquito), terrible horrible things (things heads in the museum included: "did you see the guy with the prolapsed rectum?" Something no one wants to hear especially outside of a medical team in a hospital.), and anti-parasitics if it is possible. Thank goodness the majority of it was in Thai (or maybe the Thai was the uplifting part?).
In conclusion: super excited about the lunch I just ate. I only took the ferry one stop back deciding to "walk off" my lunch parasites (just kidding you have to run those guys off, Ha!). I browsed and got another watermelon shake and some food (nothing like getting back on the street food wagon as soon as possible. Plus I learned you can only get parasites through pork, beef, fish, fruits, and vegetables.). In this time period I was followed by a fortune teller in a turban until I used some Australian men as a decoy. "Lady! Lady! I have your fortune!"
It was time for one more massage for the road (this one was a kinder and gentler assault and battery) and then dinner at a little restaurant around the corner from my bed and breakfast. Halfway through dinner after some laughing from the kitchen the restaurant filled completely with smoke causing them to have to open everything thing they could open. It gave the pad thai a sense of mystique.
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