A lot of the AtB ladies are here with private companies that provide vans and drivers for their employees. They were kind enough to share these and give us driverless ones a ride to the Nonthaburi pier. It took quite a while and there was lots of traffic, so I don't think I'll be trying it on my own any time soon.
Once we got there, we all lined up to pay our 15 baht (45 cents) for the boat ride. We got on at stop 31 and rode it all the way down to stop 8, so I think it was a very fair price. The river taxi looked like this one:
Most of us thought river bus would have been a better name.
There were seats in the front part, but mom and I opted to stand towards the back, so that we had an unobstructed view over the railing. I didn't stand too close to the railing though, because, as you can understand from looking at the picture, I had no desire to get sprayed by water from the Chao Phraya River.
Several of the stops looked like this:
We would bounce up against the tires along the side, people would get on and off, and then our skipper would blow an ear piercing whistle to let the driver know we were good to go.
I tried to take some pictures as we were going along, but we were really too far from the shore for them to come out well. I finally decided to hold onto my phone so it didn't fall in the water and just enjoy the breeze.
We got off at the Grand Palace stop. Our group leaders told us we should get in tuk tuks in groups of three, and gave some of us a little card with instructions on how to get to the shopping road we were going to. It was kind of hilarious to see a group of about 40 women get into a line of tuk tuks. Our drivers must have thought it was funny too, because they proceeded to grin while racing each other and zooming in and out of oncoming traffic. Luckily, everyone made it in one piece.
We walked down Khao San Road, which apparently is a mandatory stop for anyone backpacking through Thailand. There were tons of shopping stalls set up in front of many bars.
Our guides encouraged us to come back and shop during the day, but warned that it is not a family friendly place at night. This bar sign is one example.
If you have trouble reading the yellow sign it says: "golf bar cocktails very strong, we do not check id card & restaurant."
Needless to say, that is not where we ate lunch. We walked down the street and around the corner to a restaurant called Shoshana, which, in another it's a small world twist, turned out to be owned by an Israeli and had the menu in English, Thai, and Hebrew. Mom got a kick out of that.
The food was okay. Mom and I both got "blended" mango juice. I had a falafel pita sandwich and Mom had chicken livers.
They also had big plastic sauce bottles which cracked me up.
Unfortunately, the garlic sauce was not very garlicky. It was more like sweet mayonnaise.
After lunch the drivers picked us all up and got us back to Nichada. Mom and I didn't have enough time for a nap before the tornado that is Vivian got home, so we've been struggling to stay awake tonight and will go to sleep soon. It was a fun day though, so it's worth a bit of sleepiness.
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