Today, we join a half-day tour to the Traditional Floating Market. Its located at the outskit of Bangkok. It was a long drive thus, all of us have to wake up pretty early. The coach came to pick us up at about 6:30am.

The first stop was to the coconut plantation to see the variety of product you can get from 1 single coconut. In Bangkok, you can find coconut everywhere. Its also a source of income for them. I bought some coconut sugar for mama so that she can make her well known kuei kosui.

Next stop, was to the floating market. It was a 20 mins drive from teh coconut plantation. Once we were there, we had to take a 15min long tail boat ride. You can find a lot of houses along the river, even provision shop and cafe. You will n otice that all of these houses are facing the river as their daily life depend very much on it. Washing, bathing, drinking, etc. So you can imagine how "clean" the water in the river is.... We finally reached the famous floating market. The 6 of us hopped on to one of the boat to experience the true sell-buy of the market. the boatman manuvour thru the river like a pro. i didn't buy anything except a coconut to quench my thrist. Well, there variety of stuff wasn't very atractive...

Our next stop was to the traditional wood carving factory. These Thais are very skillful. There was this guy who carve a 3D wood piece with trees and apes. Every single detail of the tree and the apes was paid attention to. The wood piece was very majestic and eye-opening...

Following which, we head back to the hotel. The journey took about 1 1/2 hrs to cross the river. The secenery along the river was very calm n nice. But I dooze off not long after... By the time we reached the hotel, it was 2pm. We quickly went to the near-by eating place for lunch.

After that, we took a cab to Central Shoppping Mall to meet up with Poh Lay's sister and sis-in-law. Well, the whole cab waiting was quite upset. One of the cab driver who was "stationed" outside the hotel tried to be helpful to bring us there. As we do not know the exact location of the Shopping Mall, we had a hard time trying to tell the driver where we are going as we can't really pronounce the street name. Poh Lay sis-in-law spoke to the driver over the phone and told him the place. After they hung up, the driver said that the place was very far and it was about 1 hr ride. Ridiculars! We were told by the sister that, it will only take 20mins max to go from our hotel to the mall. We then realize that the driver was a crook so we quickly went back to the hotel lobby and get the staff there to help us.

Luckily, we reached the mall safely. I went to the salon to highlight my hair while the est continued their shopping spree. We met up again about an hr ltr. The sister brought us to these Teochew Chinese/Thai Roadside eating joint for dinner. We order quite a number a dishes. All were delicious esp the Flower Crab Steaboat. The soup was superb!

After dinner, we went to the local Masa Malam where the Thai teenage fequesnt. Its something like Bugis Village. Each shop is about 3x3sqm and there are a least 3000 to 4000 of them there. Over there, the stuff is dirt cheap, we dun really need to bargain. If you are lucky, you will get about max 10-30 bhat cheaper. I bought a few tees for kor, and shorts for kor and papa.

The last stop was to Chinatown for some bird nest soup for supper. We order the 3rd grade for about 300 bhat each. Its bird nest with ginko nut and rock sugar. Very refreshing but its quite sweet. Actually to the Thais its considered normal, but to us, its considered sweet. So remember, the next time you order beverage of food in Thailand, must make sure to tell the hawker, you don't want it to be so sweet, if not, sugar rush is unavoidable.

We reach the hotel at about 1am, adn its too slumberland...