Miscellaneous Bangkok Photos

After 5 months, I'm finally getting around to putting some of my Thailand photos online. To recap, I went to Thailand in May (2004). I planned to travel around for 3 weeks, but I only ended up staying for 4 days, after which I spent the rest of my Summer vacation at home in Texas.

On to the photos:

View froma Tuk-Tuk. Loud, obnoxious, stinky and unsafe, tuk-tuks are falling out of fashion in Bangkok.

The Rama VIII Bridge over the Chao Phraya River.

If you like these photos, you can see all of my Thailand Pictures here.

Khao San Road at night. Khao San is one of the big, famous party streets, lined with bars, shops and restaurants. We stayed in the Royal Hotel, a few blocks away. The Royal was a decent hotel with good facilities and reasonable rates (~$25 / night, double).

I found this lively group of Thais making coconut milk close to my hotel. No one spoke English, so I was unable to get an official explanation of what was going on, but it looked to me like they were making coconut milk to give to the Buddhist priests. An 8 piece band played traditional Thai music while 20 or so people worked with the coconuts. The guy on the right is running a manual press, squeezing the milk from the flesh.

The multi step process started with raw coconuts and ended with big buckets full of coconut milk.

These pots are full of processed coconut flesh. Most of the milk has been squeezed out already, and the remaining flesh will be thrown away...

...dumped into a big pile.

In the foreground, one can see part of the assembly-line operation. The coconut flesh is processed by hand before it goes into a press. Behind the workers is a brightly-lit display of food. I think this food was also meant for the Buddhist monks.

Foreground: raw inputs. Centerground: finished output. Background: labor.

There were so many street vendors who came out at night in the area around our hotel. This guy was hamming it up for me a bit, while his wife (coworker?) seemed a little shy. They were selling some kind of food from a portable stand on wheels.

This guy was frying up banana pies. I saved my appetite for bugs.

Fried Bugs! I had time to snap a few bug pictures and consider whether I wanted to taste any when a native, Sompot, invited me to join him for a bug snack. He offerred to pay as long as I would sit down and eat with him. I took him up on his offer. On the left, he's pointing out which bugs we'll eat. On the right, the vendor is scooping the bugs into bags. Bags of bugs.

Luckily, Sompot didn't order any giant fried roaches.

He didn't order any fried grubs, either, which was a little disappointing.

Fried scorpions were also not on our menu that night. We stuck to the safe favorites - grasshoppers, ants and beetles.

The vendor at the bug stand creeped me out more than the bugs.

More grubs, also not on the menu.

The grasshoppers were pretty tasty. They're fried with various spices, leek and garlic. The vendor sprays some vinegar sauce on them when you order.

Sompot was kind enough to demonstrate the art of eating fried ants. The ants are served with leaves, which are used as fold-up pockets. Drop a pinch of ants into a leaf, fold it up, and enjoy the crunchy goodness.

The ants were really tasty. Lots of garlic and onion flavor, plus a hefty helping of spicy chilis made them my favorite.

These fried beetles (june bugs to Texans) were also pretty tasty. They tasted a bit nutty, and were probably psychologically the hardest of the three insect types to eat.

Garbage baskets...

Ever had a sack of Pepsi? Take a small plastic sack, fill it with ice and Pepsi, and add a straw.

There were some really cool late night, outdoor markets. Huge markets, with all manners of merchandise. I thought I was going to stick around longer in Southeast Asia, so I wasn't as diligent with my camera as I could have been.

This statue sits at the foot of one of the bridges over the Chao Phraya River.

This guy was saying his prayers at the foot of the statue.