Where is Trond & Maren ?

There is a market for everything everywhere, this is the first time I have been at a amulet market. I had thougt this to be a smaller type market, but that was not correct.

Stall after stall of small and large trinkets, some massive figurs of gods an holy people (there should be a Lemmy here in bronze, if you just looked for it long enough). Besides the regular tourist people, this market had quite a lot of locals – searching trough the endless stalls, looking for whatever piece of wood or metal that would bring them luck.

We walked trough the area a few hours, with a drnk stop half way – this is situated next to one of the boat stops, so just one street up and you are at the shoreline, lots of resturants and coffeeshops.

The heat inside the market was pretty intens, the air was perfectly still and the roof was mostley coverd by the different stalls.

I picked up 10-15 small items in metal, and a few wooden ones. The wooden ones are often said to come from anything holy or close to.. wood from a famous temple etc.. They are really nicely done and the carvings are really good. So for a decorative effect they are nice atleast.

I would absolutly recomend a trip here. It is a lot of cool stuff to look at, and its not really expensive picking up a few items. Combine this with the close proximity to the boat stop, and some really nice rooftop resturants, its a nice place to spend 3-4 hours.

Might be some ivory sold here, we do not know. Its pretty illegal – but I guess you would find it here. Besides all the trinkets and amulets, there where a couple of shops there that sold chains and different boxes to use/mount the amulets you got.

Located right next to the Maharaj bot stop, or real close to Sanam Luang.

Just a few hundred meters away from our hotel the first beer brew place popped up on google maps. Its not listed on tripadvisor, at least not high up there with Mikeller and the guys. But that dont have to mean a thing!

we crossed the bridge, and for those closing in on 2 meters hight – we kept our heads low..

Weather is still nice, not to hot, some breeze. Walking outside after sundown is all good.

Most beers was in – but not any locals on tap. For the thai craft beer you had to go for the bottled stuff. We had a couple each, nice place – a mor bar thing than a resturant place.

Nice people working here to, friendly gang.

Blossom weis was probably the winner ! Nice beer, gave it a 4 on untapped! 🙂

We got up today at noon-ish, I think I slept for 12 hours 🙂

We had decided to walk down to the Amulet market (20 min walk). But kept getting rerouted do to the king or someone important was in town. Traffic and streeta blocked off every where.. got there in the end.

https://www.whereistrond.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/img_1591.mov

Ofcourse we sat down just after 1400 – so, no beer ! Not that its that important drinking beer, but its 1000 degrees here, and a beer after a nice walk is … nice

Great lemon drink ! probably way healthier than a beer anyways.

this is also one of the ferry stops along the river… most of the stops consist of a major tourist setup, with travel agencies and fridgemagnet salesmen/women/hen.. saleshen..hehe

Anyways, prices are also a bit higher closer to these spots. But the view is nice, and there is a breeze from the river thats nice

moe on the amulet thingy later on.. i just found a brew-bar on tripadvisor.

We had a few drinks at this nice outside bar – made up of a wreck of a car or somethin. Of course, jetlagged and tired – it only took a few 🙂

Now, the drinks where excelent – really. But for my last one, I orderd a Alexander, you can see the menu having a picture of it bottom right. Im not sure what he made me, but it felt like a really big glass of cognac.

The rest om em where nice, also the place was nice. Played mostly blues rock, which is a nice change for the generic ‘techno’ thats blasted everywhere else.

Our first day day in Thailand was super nice, and started with a 25 min taxiride to our hotel. The flight arrived 1 hour late , but the again both imigration and bags was snappy.

The taxi drive was your standard mad man, he is hopefully just drunk – type of thing. Moving trough traffic as someone was chasing us.

The heat hit me line a fist in the face, 30 something plus and humidity in the gaga scales.

We have booked a few nights at the IBIS cose to the ricer, short walk from the Phra Sumen Fort. I’ve never been here before, last stays have been at the Sukunvit area – I would say that this place is mor nice, and very much more family friendley.

We where a bit early to the hotel, so we had to wait a couple of hours until the rooms where ready.. no worries, 20 hours on the road.. super hot.. sun.. beer-o-clock!! woho!

But…

Oh no! – what is this? And when did that poster come up? today? yesterday? who knows? No point in askimg, english skills in thailand is limited. We did some googling, and it turns out its election today – så all alcohol is banned until 1800. (only 6 hours to go! but still…)

We got some excelent juices and smoothies though, so we do not fret.

After a couple of hours shut-eye after the trip we hit the town and got some food, beer sales was on after a while to. happy days!

There are some strange rules related to alcohol.. Its illegal to sell between 1400 and 1700 because of the kids comming home from school. So to keep them from temptaion and bad influence – they shut down.. I cant see that rule helping out a lot 🙂 🙂 🙂 .. As for now, election day – no alcohol, we do the same type of thing in Norway.. cant see why

Prices on both beer and food are superkow, 20-30 NOK for both food and beer. Or might a bit more on a fancy smancy resturant type of thingy.

The dish on pic above was something new for me. It was deepfried flat rice noodles with thai basil leafs and pork, together with lots of chillies.

We roamed around, tasting the 5 week freedom we just started. had a few drinks (look at that cool picture i took, below)

We did not test a lot of street food – we will save this for tomorrow, a bit jetlagged today. And the whole bbq crocodile did not tempt me to much – i have tested that before and Im not a fan.. but.. it looked cool 🙂

Had to do a coconut 🙂

Nice day, nice area – but we will have to explore a bit more tomorrow. time for some hour sleep!

Finaly boarded, just 1 hour or so late!

So, finaly we’re here, planned for a year – replanned last month due to the Chineese embassy being a messed up place of documents and prcocesses (itil4 ?)

China got scrapped, we will now fly into Bangkok in Thailand and then just see what happens. A rough plan is a few days in Angkor Wat (Siam Reap, Cambodia), then 14 days or so in Vietnam and then a couple of weeks in Myanmar (visas still pending).

It’ll be nice to do a 5 week vacation, its been a long time since we had such a long period of days off. We are a bit unsure of the cost of this tripp still, but hotels and flights look cheap. And food should’nt be to costly… of all the things we wanna do – of course – testing out the Vietnameese kitchen is one of the absolutes. For all the war memorials and stuff, naaah, lets see. But a few museums should be ticked of at least.

Flight leaves at 1600 – but this is Norwegian, so it will probably be delayed. 🙂

I put a bid in for the norwegian premium class, usually the are 4500NOK pr pers, but my bid for 1800NOk got accepted (yey!), so the aprox 10 hr flight should be smooth sailing.

And there it came, while writing this, “Your flight to Bangkok has been delayed..”. Only 1 hour so far – but lets see when we end up leaving. 🙂

Due to the premium seats we got lounge access, free bubbles and wine. So no worries 🙂 .. Boarding in a couple of hours!

So the main reason for me being here is the AWS seminar, that and Metallica playing on Monday. (no, I didn’t get tickets, they where like 300$ for standing)

Continue reading “AWS re:invent 2018 , Las Vegas”