Galen & Rebecca Kennel’s Weblog

The River View Guesthouse is a short walk from the Harbour Dept. pier for catching the ferries that run along the Chao Phraya River. We only go the one hop to Rachawongse pier in order to explore the markets of Chinatown. The guidebook describes a walking tour, but we can’t find any street signs that are the same as those on the map, so we bump around. You can’t go too wrong in Chinatown – it is all interesting. Whether you are in the fresh fruit and vegetable market or the wholesale stuff area, the shops that sell fabic or winding through the narrow walkways lined with shops. . .it is mindboggling the variety of goods that are available. Through it all, even in the narrow walkways, the food hawkers push their carts and delivery boys haul freight on carts or handtrucks.

We wander around, heading in the general direction of our Guesthouse. Once back there, we take the ferry again, this time south to the Central Pier to take the Skytrain to the Jetstar office for another ticket change.

This time we are looking for the Charn Issara Tower, also on Rama IV Road. On exiting the Skytrain, there is no friendly person to show us where to go, but there is a good map. The directions in my head are completely opposite to what the map shows and I can’t get my head around it. Galen seems to know where to go, so I follow him down and out onto the street. We arrive at the Tower and take the elevator to the 21^st floor. There we see a sign that says the office has moved to the 3^rd floor. However, the elevators don’t stop at the 3^rd floor. Each elevator has a sign – ‘No access to 3^rd floor’. Weird.

Back on the ground floor, I ask the reception and they point to another elevator around the corner that will stop at the 3^rd floor. The 3^rd floor looks like it is part of a mall with the central area open to all the floors. After walking around the whole floor, we can’t find the Jetstar office. Finally, following a side hallway, we come to the Jetstar office. This time it costs me $180 US, as the costs of the flights have gone up and they charge a change fee.

We catch the Skytrain back to the river, then take the ferry again. This is one of the best parts about Bangkok – riding the long, wooden ferries.

We plan to get off at stop #7, then catch a ferry that goes back and forth across the river, in order to see some of the sites on the other side, but the ferry we are on doesn’t stop at the right place. Oh well, we wanted to take the ferry to the end and back, so we settle in for the hour-long ride.

There are several derelict high-rise condos along the shore – condos that were started before the 1997 Asian economic crisis and never finished. We pass some beautiful homes along the water – some that are remodelled traditional homes and some newly built. New high-rise condos and restaurants. Some industrial sites, a lumber mill, a dry dock for ship repair. Several fleets of military boats.

Photos from the day, except I didn’t take any of the river as I figured I was so far behind in my blog, I didn’t want to add to my workload. Poor decision.