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The floating market was a wonderful experience because you rent a boat and a driver who paddles you along the canals. The canals were full of other boats with people (women mostly) selling wares and food. Along the sides of the canal there were vendors selling wares (mostly souvenirs) to the farangs. If you pointed to a vendor the driver would paddle you over to the vendor where you could get a closer look and negotiate a price if you liked the item. While you were shopping, you could buy food and drinks from the food vendors paddling up and down the canals. I drank coconut milk from a fresh coconut and had the sticky rice with the custard on it.

The wares they sell at the floating market are basically souvenirs for us flatland touristers, but I did get Kimberly a string puppet of a dancer in an authentic Thai costume, mask, and one of those pointy gold hats that you see in all the pictures. She loved it. Since I don’t speak Thai and I am not very good (or comfortable) with haggling, I let Lucia’s sister-in-law do the bargaining. She seemed to know what was a good price. She spoke a little English and her mother helped translate since she speaks English very well (she taught English grammar). Lucia’s niece also helped. I didn’t know it at the time but she was studying English and came along so she could practice. As Lucia said, you need to bargain them down from farang prices to Thai prices. Despite the tourist-trap aspects of the floating market, it is an experience that should not be missed if you are ever in Bangkok.

We spend several hours at the floating market. Before heading back to Bangkok, we ate lunch at an open air restaurant that was build on a dock that extended over the ocean. I remember that a large group of Buddhist monks were sitting in a section of the restaurant chanting and eating. I had read that the monks traditionally went down the street with their bowls and people would fill their bowls as the walked by. Strictly speaking, the Buddhist monks are vegetarian but they will eat anything that people put in their bowls. So if people put some fish or chicken or pork in their bowls, the monk have no problems with eating it because it is viewed as a gift. And lest anyone think that the people feed leftovers to the monks, the people are expected to feed the monks before they eat the food themselves. I am not sure if this tradition is observed because I never saw any monks walking down the streets with their bowls. So I wandered if perhaps the monks had walked down to this restaurant with their bowls so they could get a really good meal. There was nothing around the restaurant so it was probably the only place that the monks could go for food. After the monks left, the staff started clearing the dishes. There was a commotion and I saw a monkey who ran across the table, snatching some of the food left on the monk’s plates.

We had a really good meal at the restaurant. We had a dish made up from fish eggs. The eggs were about the size of small grapes and tasted very salty. I ate it but I did not particularly care for the dish. I put the dish just above the red ant eggs soup that I wouldn’t eat in Lamphon. But the rest of the meal more than made up for the fish egg dish. We had some crab and yet another whole fish. The fish looked like it was grilled and they made some diamond shape cuts on the side. All of the whole fish that we ate while in Thailand were visually appealing but this one was especially appealing.

After we ate, we drove back to Bangkok. We got Lucia’s mother’s house in the middle of the afternoon. It was extremely hot and humid. November through February are probably the best months to go to Thailand because it is relatively cool and there is little or no rain. The hot season starts in March or April and is followed by the rainy season. Everyone commented that the rains were coming. Apparently the hot weather is accompanied by rain. Lucia’s mother said ‘When the frogs cry, it will rain." A few days before, I had heard the frogs. All over southern Thailand, they sell frogs carved out of wood in the souvenir shops. The wood is hollowed out and there is a slit where the mouth is. There are knobs on the back of the frog and the frog comes with a stick that is stored by inserting it in holes drilled in the frogs’ belly. When you rub the stick along the knobs on the frogs back, it makes a sound like the Thai frogs. In Thailand, the frogs don’t ‘croak’ like they do in the US. The Thai frogs are loud and when a bunch of them start ‘croaking’, the sound is deafening. I actually got myself one of the wooden frogs when we were in Krabi. I am glad I did because it was starting to have more meaning for me. The frog seems to capture one very small aspect of Thailand.

Lucia called late in the afternoon. Everyone had taken a nap after our journey to the floating market and the heat made everyone drowsy. Lucia said that she was almost done at the bank. She went to the bank where she had worked for 18 years before she came to the US. She has a lot of friends there and she stopped by to see them. They wanted to get together that evening. I was disappointed because I had wanted to spend the evening with Lucia. All the time in Bangkok had been spent with family and friends. It was great meeting them but I had been looking forward to spending some time by ourselves. I know that Lucia had already agreed to meet with them after work, so I agreed. One of her fellow co-workers from the bank drove Lucia back to her Mother’s house and then drove us and our luggage to the Quality Suites. We checked in and then went down to the restaurant and talked while they waited for the other to show up. After a while we decided to eat something. I wasn’t too hungry so I ordered a bowl of lobster bisque and a BLT. The BLT sounded good and I figured it would be my last chance to eat the delicious bacon they have in Thailand. It is meaty and has a smoky flavor and is completely unlike the pig fat they call bacon here in the US.

When were had finished eating, two of Lucia’s friends from the bank finally showed up. The had a hard time finding the hotel and ended up calling Lucia’s friend on her cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone it Thailand it seems. Lucia said that it takes up to 2 years to have a new wired telephone installed so most people opt for a cell phone. Her friends finally arrived. They talked about work at the bank. Lucia’s friend (the one who drove us to the hotel) said that she was working in a small department consisting of 3 employees. One of the other employees used to be her best friend but they had a falling out and now were bitter enemies. Lucia’s friend said that this former best friend would answer the phone and if the call was for one of the others, she would say that they no longer worked for the bank. She also threw out faxes that were address to the others. I was surprised because I didn’t think Thais behaved this way but I guess there are some things that transcend any culture.

One of the ladies who arrived later was quite attractive and was known to be a bit of a comedienne. Some of the talk got around to her. She had never been married and had few (or no) real boyfriends. Someone asked her if she every kissed any of them and she admitted that she hadn’t. The group conversation went off into other directions. This woman started talking to me and asked what I knew about the Thai customs. I said that I knew the standard ones such as not touching anyone on their head and not pointing with your feet. I told her these were not a real problem because Americans were not accustomed to doing this anyway. She then told be that she had seen American movies and TV shows and that she noticed that there were no fences around them. I told here that I had a fence around my back yard but it was not locked and did not prevent people from entering it if they wanted. I told her that wealthy people sometimes erected large fences around their property but most people did not. I even mentioned that in some parts of the US, people did not put up any fences. She then asked if not having a fence made me afraid. I replied that it didn’t but did say that we usually keep our door locked.

Her question was a real revelation to me because I realized something about the Thais that I had seen but had not registered with me in the nearly three weeks we had been in Thailand. I had seen evidence of it all along. In Chiang Mai, the old part of the city is surrounded by a huge, square brick wall. I am not sure that all of it is still standing but I do recall seeing remnants of one. The wall is at least a mile long in each direction. On the outside of the wall is a moat. When we drive through an old section of Bangkok, I remember seeing a massive, white wall that was both tall and wide. Someone said that it once surrounded the city of Bangkok. Furthermore, they said that the road along the wall that we were riding on was once one of the Bangkok canals that had been filled in. And in Ayutthaya, we saw ancient castles that once had massive walls build around them. Apparently the walls didn’t help since the Burmese managed to invade the area and destroyed all of the buildings within the walls and tore down the walls too. And on a much smaller scale, there is a fence that surrounds Lucia’s mother’s house. The fence isn’t one of these crummy 6-1/2 foot wood fences we use around here. This is an 8 or 9 feet high block wall with a heavy iron gate across the driveway. All the houses on that street had these high fences and walls. In the US we sometimes like to say "a man’s home is his castle.’ In Thailand the motto would be "a man’s home is his fortress!’ So it appears that over the last 1000 years, the Thais have always felt the need to erect a fortress around their dwellings. Here in California, we seem to like to build fences around our back yards. I once spent time working in Paoli, Pennsylvania which is about 30 miles west of Philadelphia. The houses were old (easily over a hundred years old) and are spread apart. And nowhere did I see a fence. Apparently the people never felt the need to mark their property or erecting barriers around their houses. This behavior may be considered abnormal because a lot of animals, including dogs, pee on things to mark off areas that they consider theirs. Humans use fences and walls do accomplish the same thing.