Bangkok, Day 3

Today I played the proper tourist, and went from temple to museum to palace all day. It was a good day, but the Thai sentimentality in regards to their museums had me chuckling quite a bit. They don't seem to believe in culling anything! If one spear is good, 50 is better. Why have just one cannon, when we could display them all? And how many Buddhas do I need to see in the "stop fighting between relatives" pose? (Well, actually....) At the museum attached to the really big temple here (Wat Something-that-I've-already-forgotten, but it houses the Emerald Buddha), they had a display of tools that they used in the restoration of the temple. Yes, they had on display, among many other things, a saw, a hammer, and, my personal favorite, a toothbrush. Later in the day at the Elephant Museum (don't ask, for I don't know the answer), I particularly enjoyed seeing an elephant molar and "pickled while elephant leather" (translation: elephant skin in formaldehyde).

At all the temples and some of the museums I had to take my shoes off. Let me tell you, I LOVE being barefoot walking around museums. (Now if I could only find a museum where extraneous bits of clothes were optional...) Of course, once I was barefoot, I automatically started to practice my plies and releves. Luckily these museums weren't terribly popular. In fact at one little museum I was the only person there, so I had my own personal guard/shadow. I'm not sure if she was making sure I didn't touch or steal anything, or if she wanted to make sure I followed the arrows that were on the floors of every museum telling you exactly which way to flow through it!

Given my gourmet western meal yesterday, I decided that today I would eat off the streets. No, not Thai roadkill (which would likely be one of the zillion cats I've seen wandering around), but eating from street vendors. So here is what I had today:

Breakfast-- 3 bananas and half a pineapple (very delicious it was)
Lunch-- Noodle soup of some sort, which had some odd fish product things floating in it
Dessert (I happened upon a random street fair that reminded me of Taste of Missouri, but without all the crafts, just the food)-- Some square thing that looked like a little cake with candied ginger shreds atop. Well, the candied ginger turned out to be onion, so I was a bit dubious about the cake part. I also couldn't figure out how to get it out of the little tin, and she didn't give me (or I forgot to pick up) any fork or chopsticks or anything... So I dug in with my fingers, and was pleased to find that it was indeed sweet. Kind of like a very moist cakey flan sort of thing.
Snack-- I spotted something that looked like four crab rangoons on a stick, so excitedly got that. Unfortunately it turned out to be hard boiled eggs wrapped in won tons. You win some, you lose some.

There is a good likelihood that I will become quite ill later tonight, but for the moment I am feeling happily sated.