First, second and third parts are here.
After two fulfilling (but grueling) touring days in Thailand, the third day (February 11) I had was purely dedicated to just two things – eating, and shopping. That is all for that day, no serious touristy stuff included. I had a good enough fill for two days. This one is for more of what I want to eat and buy. And for reasons I’ll explain later, I didn’t want to visit everything at once.
But, where do I go, first thoughts. Before I flew to Thailand, I was vexed while planning my free day. Because I want the last day just for buying stuff and eating stuff. Where to go? First and most viable place will be a market. You want to buy stuff and eat local? Markets are the places to head for. And Thailand has no shortage of markets. Lots of them around Bangkok. There’s a floating market here, too. Another one has a market on a train line that goes through it, in a sense. These two are so famous and iconic that even Klook had tours that center around them. But, I immediately crossed them off the list. Next time, I thought. Save that for a future trip back. So I looked for more markets.
But only one market stood above my final list when it came to possible treats. It was billed as a “weekend” market, and as the day I was to use for buying stuff fell on a Sunday as well, I thought it would be best if I paid the place a visit. It was called the “Chatuchak Weekend Market”. From what I’ve read, it seemed like a massive marketplace with a mall building beside it. And there was a big eatery section there too. So it seemed perfect for what I was looking for. I did not have an interest in market hopping anyway, it’ll just be a touring proxy. Had two tours already, a third would be maniacal. Ended up right because by the night of February 10, I was rubbing Tiger Balm ointment on my feet because they were so sore. I definitely didn’t want a third full day of the same.
I also planned for weather that day. Prediction was a sunny and cloudy day. But as I am in Asia, weather can be a moody bitch sometimes. So my fallback place to go in case it rained was Centralworld. Third largest mall in Thailand. It was between it and ICONSIAM, but I remembered the many paths I had to traverse to go from ICONSIAM to BTS Nana, so I settled on Centralworld due to proximity to the green BTS line and relative adjacency to other malls.
When I woke up at 6AM that day, I wasn’t in any expedient need to do stuff right away. So I just took out the sandwiches and coffee from the fridge, and spent an hour just watching morning TV. Thank heavens that the room I booked had a comfortable couch set up in front of a TV. I even took my time in the shower. But the weather early that morning was worrisome though.
By around 9AM, I was ready to leave the hotel for one last jaunt somewhere in Bangkok. I wore the same shirt I had from Feb 9 paired with the same training pants from the previous day. Fortunately the Siemens washing machine I had in the room has a drying function too. As I was not in a hurry anymore, I walked from the hotel to the train station.
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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