On Saturday, we explored the area along Tha Pae Road, which included a lot of shopping.  Shopping can mean anything from a high-end store selling Thai silk fabrics to a back alley where Hmong and hill-tribe people sell their handmade clothing and handbags and live in squalor along a canal.

When it started to rain heavily, we ducked into our first local, low-cost noodle shop.  We noticed that we were the only non-Thai people there, which either meant 1) the food is great and locals love it or 2) the food is questionable and tourists avoid it.  All we had to do was point to the particular type of noodles we wanted and the cook did the rest.  She grabbed a handful with her bare hands and threw them into some boiling water.  After adding some vegetables (bean sprouts, maybe?) and a few slivers of meat (beef, maybe?), she poured it all into a bowl with flavored broth.  It turned out to be very good, and fortunately it did not cause us any stomach problems afterwards.

We explored another beautiful temple – Wat Saen Fang.  Although all of the Wat’s appear the same to us, this one supposedly was built by Burmese settlers in the area and has uniquely Burmese decorations and designs.

After a hard day of exploring, we stopped into a small coffee shop named “Golden Cake.”  We wandered into this coffee shop because Amber had been craving hot chocolate ever since we arrived, and this was the first shop we saw that had a sign outside advertising hot chocolate.  The owner of the shop was a very sweet little old lady in her 70′s.  She spoke English surprisingly well.  She told us she visited Florida five years ago to “meet Mickey Mouse,” and that she went to California in the 1970′s to learn cake decorating.  Ever since then, she has been baking and decorating cakes.  Her store was very quaint and retro, and she sat and talked with us for nearly an hour.  Since her coffee shop is relatively close (and about half the price of the upscale coffee shops catering to farangs**), we will definitely visit her again.

On Saturday night, we went with a few of our new SEE TEFL friends back to the Night Bazaar.  Dinner consisted of some very affordable and authentic Thai food, such as green curry tofu and eggplant for me and pad thai noodles for Amber.

** Thai people use the word “farang” as a slang word for anyone of Western descent.  This can include tourists visiting for a few days or expats that have taken up residence in the area.

Tags: shopping, temple