Bangkok - Sunday

Thanks to our early night, we were able to rise at about 8am, breakfast at the hotel and arrive at our first tourist destination Chatuchak Weekend Market via MRT by 10am.

Breakfast

Funny sign

JJ market (abbreviated from alternative spelling Jatujak) is HUGE. Over 8000 shops and stalls, selling almost anything you could possibly think of, separated into several sections. The whole place was a hustling, bustling haggler's paradise, and I bought plenty of things to bring home for people, as well as a couple of bits and pieces for myself. After a few hours walking around, we lunched on paella which was prepared in a massive pan by a very skilled chef so that people could watch. I also had a much needed refreshing fruit/yoghurt smoothie type drink which was delicious. They love putting yoghurt in their drinks here, and I love the texture it creates. We soldiered on in the sweltering heat of the marketplace for another hour after lunch before waving the sweaty white shirt of surrender to the scorchio weather and retreating back into the MRT.

Another funny sign

So many clothes!

Paella man

Manly lunchtime drink

On a whim, we decided not to go straight back to the hotel and shower yet, so that we could visit the Thailand Cultural Centre MRT station and see what was so cultural about it. Turns out, not much! We wandered about and found a shopping mall that seems to have opened but forgotten to install many actual shops, creating a very bright white place with no apparent purpose. However, the toilets were very nice, so it wasn't a total loss. After that we crossed the road to the shopping mall opposite which actually had shops in it. Here we treated ourselves to small chocolate covered doughnuts on a stick before wandering back out and into a street market. We looked, but not with much enthusiasm - we were all marketed out by this stage, so we headed to the MRT station. On the way in, we noticed a sign for a supposedly spectacular, free stage show which plays in the area every evening, called Siam Niramit. I took the details and checked it out back at the hotel, and we decided to go, based on the excellent reviews from almost everyone who has seen it.

We took the MRT back to Thailand Cultural Centre, and waited for the free shuttle bus to transport us to the theatre. On the bus we got talking to a fellow theatre-goer about the show, and I asked him how they afford to put on such a lavish show for free every night. He chuckled and said it wasn't free, only the shuttle bus was. I hope I'm not the only one to have made this mistake. So we arrived, and we decided to go anyway despite the expense, and the tickets with buffet dinner included were 1850 Baht, approximately £35. The buffet certainly didn't disappoint and had a huge range of food, from traditional Thai dishes including a delicious red curry, to roast chicken and chips, with a whole lot more in between. Unfortunately as we had arrived a little late we couldn't eat as much as we wanted to, but we still had plenty. We also missed the elephant rides and a handful of other activities and things that happen in the 3 hours preceding the start of the show. But never mind.

After taking our seats in the 3000 seater auditorium and standing for the national anthem, we settled in and enjoyed the show, which focussed around the origins of Thailand, and how the country was formed. This was all expressed through text on a screen, music, mime and dance. The drummers at the beginning were especially good. The stage was huge, and is apparently one of the biggest in the world. The scene changes were incredibly smooth and unnoticeable. Halfway through the first part, sprinklers were used on the stage to simulate the monsoon, and only at that moment did we notice that the front of the stage was made of water, forming a kind of river separating the crowd and performers. A performer then jumped into it and sank completely out of sight before resurfacing, so it was definitely deep.

Then something amazing happened. After the first 40 minutes there was a comedic musical interlude, where a conductor came onto the stage and introduced 7 other musicians, each holding a wooden musical instrument a bit like an abacus, that they shook vigorously to make a note. This meant there was one note missing, so the spotlight searched around the stage and up in the rafters before moving onto the crowd and settling on..

Yep

So I was lead to the stage of this 3000 seater theatre with hundreds or thousands of people watching me, on slightly wobbly legs if I'm being honest! The conductor and I made the Thai greeting to each other and I was given the 8th 'rattler' and told to stand on the end of the line of performers. My first attempt at rattling wasn't brilliant, but got a laugh, and my second attempt was much better and I got a cheer from the crowd :D Then the conductor started pointing to each musician in turn, prompting them to play their notes in a musical tune. I waited on tenterhooks until finally he pointed at me for the last note of the piece, which actually sounded ok! Next, the conductor pretended to kick a musician out of the group and replaced him with me, and I played a much bigger part in the next piece, acquitting myself well. We did one more piece and the I went to the front of the stage to bow to the crowd and to the conductor, the latter of which gave me a cool Siam Niramit scarf. that I wore proudly through the rest of the show and after leaving the auditorium.