Day Four: 17 February

After seeing Paul off to the airport to share his exciting news with his colleagues in Beijing, Laurie and I returned to Chatuchak, tackling a different side of the market. In one section you can buy many endangered species at bargain prices! I was tempted, but the customs authorities in the UK are really conservative about that sort of thing and so with regret, I had to resist the urge.

In the afternoon, we took the express boat up to pier no.12 and walked to the Royal Barge Museum, which is down Soi Wat Dusitaram. On the way there, Laurie was able to show me the new home that Paul wants to buy once the flat is filled with ancient temple relics. She isn't sure about it, but her interior decorator, Dang, is a real genius!

It would be great to live in such a charming unspoilt neighbourhood, particularly if you are a pesky spirit. The whole area is crammed with spirit houses of the most desirable kind. We passed an ‘ancient boat house’, also a temple and a mosque, before reaching Khlong Bangkok Noi, the canal on which the museum is built.

Bangkok is known for its fleet of royal barges, which are only brought out on special occasions. They were last used in the autumn, for the King's 80th birthday celebrations. That must have been quite something, because these boats are big, many of them needing more than sixty rowers using paddles similar to those used in Chinese dragonboats. We need to get one of these boats over to London for the great river race on the Thames next September. Alternatively, my friend Sue King could cover the boat we row in with gold leaf and make us all wear silk. I wouldn't put it past her, that is the kind of enthusiastic boater she is!

We stopped to buy more weird fruit on the street, some of which we didn’t recognise but I had the seller cut some for me to try, and it turned out to be gandaria, which the Thais call ma praang. The fruit looks and tastes like a small mango, and is sold in a bunch, like bananas. It is more common in Malaysia and Indonesia, and is little known outside the region, but tastes great with low fat vanilla yogurt. I bought enough so that we can eat nothing but gandaria for the rest of the trip, which Laurie is thrilled about.

We hailed a taxi to Wat Rakhang, the temple of bells, hoping to catch the monks ringing the bells at 6pm. That didn’t work because it looked as if the big bells are being restored, but worth trying later. The temple itself has a hypnotic atmosphere, largely because of the hundreds of small bells hanging around the bot and in the grounds. A lot of interesting action here, a good place just to sit and watch Thai temple life. The most interesting building by far is the small laquered red library that was once home to Rama I.

The streets surrounding Wat Rakhang are interesting; the Patravardi theatre is a few yards upriver, and is where cool, alternative young Thai actors hang out and you can go and see unbelievably bad fringe theatre according to my friend, and the world's leading authority on everything that is worth doing in life, Nicholas Song. The pier here has a ferry that crosses to pier no.9. We really enjoyed waiting for the ferry as the sun was beginning to set, as there was a lot of Thai life going on. People were throwing bread into the water, which was live with catfish.I took pictures of two boys diving off the river steps next to the pier for mussels, which they were collecting on the stern instructions of their grandma, who was instructing them from the embankment.

This is what the commute home from work in Bangkok is like:

We got home, changed, and came out again by boat, stopping at the Oriental for a drink and then we went out for dinner around the corner at Tongue Thai – good Thai-fusion food, with steamed seabass and a spicy pomelo salad. We had sticky rice and mango for the third night in a row. This is the national signature dish, and so far as I can see, the main reason Laurie agreed to come and live here. I expect that sticky rice and gandaria would be just as good.