BETTER IN BANGKOK: DAY THREE: Part 4 of 4
YAOWARAT: SHOPPING AND SEAFOOD Your last day depends on your needs, and what follows. If you plan to head upcountry you need not shop in Bangkok: prices out of the city are as much as 50% lower. Martial arts types might consider a bruising day kick boxing at the Muay Thai Institute. Thai cooking schools abound at hotels such as the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit our personal favorite in the heart of the shopping district, and Buddhist meditation lessons come in more flavors than the local fruit drinks. Then too, you can try the many water parks, pools and Western sports complexes.
Otherwise, it is time to consider Yaowarat, Bangkok's unique Chinatown named after the main street, noisy, crowded and smog infested Yaowarat Road. Chinese merchants carried much of the trading load in Thailand even before Rama I kicked them off the site of what's now the Grand Palace complex. The Chinese barely moved off Rattanakosin Island, over Oang Ang Canal and into Yaowarat, the mile-long strip that runs to Odeon Circle near the Hua Lamphong Railway Station.
If you don't mind crowds of happy Thais and tourists the best time to visit falls between Saturday evening and Sunday midnight on the first weekend of the month. The couple of hundred yards of the upscale Odeon Circle end of Yaowarat Road that become pedestrian-only territory filled with lion dances, Chinese opera and much else. Any Chinese holiday fills the streets here with celebratory Chinese too.
The best time to shop is early in the day when shutters come off the shops and stands set up because many merchants believe it important to start the day with a sale. You may get a decent price if, of course, you know how to bargain and check department and craft outlet quality and prices downtown before you buy.
There's more to Yaowarat than shopping. The best late night seafood in town comes from a section of cross-street Phadungdao Road called, oddly enough in Bangkok, Soi Texas. Fresh seafood fins, creeps or crawls in tanks here so you can order whatever dish you prefer "on the shell or fin" so to speak. Chinese food is superb and you can find at least five or six regional types plus an interesting sort of "Thai-Chai."
Chinese Temples come in many flavors such as the "model delights" of Wat Mae Lao Fang. It is named after the owner of a house where ladies of the evening prospered; naturally the Thais call it Wat Kanikaphon. Chinese burn paper models of Mercedes and such, and offer the spirits of food to newly deceased relatives here. After the spirit essence of the food leaves it's apparently okay to eat the earthly remains of Peking Duck and such.
Latest Articles