Oysters and Thai Waitresses

Yesterday, I went down to the river.  The Chao Phraya river, to be exact.

I got lost there.  Ok, not exactly lost (the only time I've ever been truly lost was in London, and that was because I didn't look at the taller buildings for bearings), but I wandered a fair piece away from where I started from.




The first thing I saw was a cute little park, with children trimming the shrubbery and a fountain filled with fish (unfortunately, no fish turned up in my picture).

 Then I saw the building in the background.

It's actually a little more visible in this picture.
















Holy cow, it was amazing.  It's an old skyscraper, totally disused and falling apart.

So this picture is from a little further away, but notice how the color changes from white-ish at the bottom to a slightly grey look then to a completely darker, more ominous doom color at the top.  Amazing.

This picture is a little closer, but I was ushered off the property by the security guards, so I couldn't get a good...look at what I wanted:  the trees growing in the parking lot, the iron poles standing out like fingers grasping at nothing.  The very...creepiness of the building.  If I ever make a horror film, I'm totally using this building as the setting.











Anyway, after falling in love with this building, I went on walking and found the Junk Wat.  A "wat" is a temple, and this one was specifically dedicated to the Chinese Junk (a trading vessel) a couple hundred years ago.  At the time, the Thai government was worried that due to internal strife, the Chinese would stop trading, so the ruler at the time (King Rama the ....) dedicated a shrine for the Junk.  Awesome.

I walked through the compound, and at the nether end, there was a guy selling fish food.  I didn't understand what the scam was, until I saw a lady buy a bucket of food and throw it into the river's water.

Yep, those are fish going belly-up for food thrown from a sweet older lady (I didn't take her picture because I didn't want to be rude.)


I kept on walking, and after a while I became famished.  I was in a strictly Thai part of town, which means that no one spoke English and I don't speak Thai, so eventually I settled myself down at a "restaurant."

There was no menu, only a waitress who looked at me expectantly.  I made the motion of "I'm so hungry I could eat your entire family" and she nodded.  Then she looked at me and made a sign which I interpreted as "spicy."  (Don't ask me how, but I know I was right.) I nodded and then suddenly before me, a feast.  Oysters, squid, a whole fish, sausage, greens, soup with pink noodles, a cold beer, and my waitress smiling at me.  I ate.  I ate.  I ate and ate and sweated and wiped my brow and ate some more.  Oh, it was so good.  The only awkward time was when I was trying to figure out what to do with all the sauces and the oysters but my waitress literally took my chopsticks away and prepared the oysters for me (some green stuff, some red stuff, a little brown powder) and actually fed me.  Ohhhh, I love you, Oysters and Thai waitresses.