Bangkok Day 3 – Art and Ice Cream

Sunday 9th October 2022

So after our previous days of getting up much later than we’d like,we set an 8.30am alarm. Hopefully this’ll help us kick the jet lag! First job of the day is to take our clothes to the nearest laundry – check! Apparently we need to collect them tomorrow morning, fingers crossed they’ll be dry as we fly to Cambodia the following day.

Chores done, we set off for the day. According to the weather forecast it’s heavy thunderstorms from 11am onwards so we decide to do indoor stuff. The Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre sounded perfect. Three miles from where we were staying – an hours bus ride though, so thought we may as well make the most of the dry weather by walking.

We stopped for a very early lunch (by 11am we were starting to feel hungry, probably as we didn’t have dinner last night) at a restaurant called Chaiyapram. Menu was completely in Thai, but luckily the very helpful owner spoke great English. We shared a spicy chicken noodle dish between us.

After lunch, we continued our walk to the Arts Centre. When we arrived we were hot, sweaty, and in need of an ice cream break. As luck would have it, there’s an ice cream shop on the 4th floor. All the classic flavours – coconut, chocolate, global warming. jelly lactobacillus….. I played it safe and went for strawberry cheesecake (delicious), Pete took a punt on global warming (turned out to be mint choc chip!)

After our well deserved ice creams, we wandered around the museum. Rather than any large exhibition, there were several very small discreet exhibits spread across the various floors. There was one very thought provoking one documenting the refugees from Myanmar and the camps near the Thai border – I never imagined the aid would be delivered by people wading across the river, it certainly put our worries into perspective!

Our next stop was the Jim Thompson House museum. I’d never actually heard of Jim Thompson – apparently some American entrepreneur who moved to Thailand and started a silk business, then mysteriously went missing whilst on holiday, and he’s actually quite famous. I just thought it might be interesting to see his house as I quite enjoy looking at different buildings / inside houses. The museum itself wasn’t particularly impressive, but there’s a free guided tour which really bought it to life. It was quite a cool house (and several other smaller buildings) in a jungle-like garden. I wouldn’t necessarily put it down as a top sight to see in Bangkok, but definitely interesting and a good option for wet weather.

The rain had still held off, so we decided to walk back in the direction of the hotel, fending off all the tuk tuk offers along the way. We stopped for a beer at a little bar along the canal, was very relaxing watching the fish as the rain began to fall.

We suspected we wouldn’t have long before the thunderstorm starter in earnest, so went to a restaurant called Jeng Noodle, a short walk away, for dinner. We timed it just right, as within 10 minutes of sitting down, it was torrential downpour, thunder, & lightening! We shared chicken with cashews (very yummy), pork with chill and Thai basil, and a chicken noodle dish (the latter two were nice, but didn’t stand out compared with other meals we’ve had). It was still heavy rain when we’d finished, so we shared a large Chang whilst we waited for it to ease off.

We walked back to our hotel, and then Pete went out to forage beer and snacks from the local Seven Eleven. I’m not sure if he deliberately looked for the ones with the most suggestive sounding names he could find.