We have seen small pickup trucks converted into taxis. They have a small metal roof overhead of the truck box and the tailgate is kept down with two make shift seats on each end of it. The inside of the box has a bench seat along each side. I really don’t think the seats on the tailgate are very safe!
You remove your shoes at many places here. It is thought to be very dirty to wear shoes inside. It really is when you think of it. You have to remove them at the door of many hotels, internet cafes, restaurants and definitely at any religious temple, etc.
Here is some samples of prices here
Dinner
large plate of vegetable fried rice
large dish of sweet and sour vegetables with tofu
1 order 8 spring rolls
1 beer
1 can of ice tea
240baht (under $7 Canadian total)
a shopping trip we did
2 rolls scott toilet paper (believe me you need to keep stalked up here on this)
2 notebooks to write in
1 large bottled water
79baht (about $1.10 Canadian)
So tired of hearing the music of Jack Johnson and James Blunt being repeated everywhere we go here. We really like these two musicians and Thailand is ruining them for us!!!
There is a late night street vendor on our route back to our hotel in Bangkok. She packs up all her wares at night, but leaves the robes and two piece pajamas hanging out on the wall adjacent to the sidewalk. Just in case those late night shoppers need some PJ’s! We walked past one night around midnight and they were all still hanging out with no one in sight!
We have never seen so many copy items in our life. You can get copied or knock offs for everything here. We really don’t know how they get away with it. Every DVD or music CD you can imagine. Photo copied books like the Lonely Planet travel guide, name brand knock offs of shoes, wallets, clothing and watches. All for a fraction of the regular price. Some stuff is as good as quality as the originals, others not.
We love seeing the miniature temples and Buddhas all over the place. There is a mini temple in front of every house, restaurant and even gas stations. All of them have offerings set outside of the temple, we assume for the Buddha inside. We will have to find this info out. Most have a bottled water with a straw and some juice. At some of the shops in the markets we have seen temples in the store with so many bottles of water and liquid we thought it was for sale.
Men all over the city sit and pluck their beard and mustache hair with tweezers. Many times our taxi driver starts to do it when we are sitting in traffic.
There is almost a cult following of Royalty here in Thailand. Some of them try to look as much alike as the queen as possible. We saw one lady who was a food vendor who looked so much like the queen it was scary. She has a picture of the real queen hung at her stall so she can have everyone admire how much she looks like her. There are another group of ladies who have been given a special title because they are married to someone with a high official job, usually in the government. They dress very elaborately and make their hair very big. They have so much makeup on it would put Tammy Faye to shame! They walk around with an entourage of people and consider themselves very important.
It didn’t take us long to discover that the restaurant we are sitting in and ordering our food from is not necessarily the place where the food is coming from. Many times we have been sitting in a place to see food coming in from somewhere else. One time we saw a saran wrapped pizza show up on a bicycle. It was unwrapped and served to the table next to us. If you are in a restaurant that has many items on the menu, chances are some of it will be coming from another place. Ordering Indian food in a non-Indian restaurant will almost guarantee this.
We have also discovered that as little as $5 difference in the price you pay for accommodation can make a huge difference in what you get. Sometimes that extra will be the difference between a mediocre place with little to offer to something spectacular.
We were waiting at a bus station, it wasn’t really a bus station but a street where the buses come and park. There were several food vendor carts along side the road. People work such long hours that their family life revolves around their business. We saw a dad give his young son of about 4 years a full washing at the bus station. He placed the boy up on a milk crate buck naked, lathered him up and then rinsed him off with the hose.
We saw a guy that calls himself the Thai Eric Clapton. He was actually really good. What made it even funnier was that he looked like Tommy Chong.
Many restaurants in Thailand advertise that they have clean food! Isn’t it scary that they would have to do this!
People park their vehicles in neutral. This is just in case someone may need to move it. We have seen many occasions where someone gets out of their car to push a vehicle either forwards or back so they can then fit into a spot.
I don’t think we wrote about the golf course at Bangkok airport. They have used the usual wasted space in between the runways for a golf course. What a great idea! I don’t know how pleasant it would be to play with all the noise of the planes landing and taking off, maybe the fees are really cheap? The funniest part is where the course is split in two. There are lights set up like at a train crossing. This is the lane that cuts through the golf course for the planes to get to the terminals after they land. The golfers stand at the crossing waiting for the plane to move out of the way so they can continue onto the holes on the other side.