Today started late. It began with sleeping in, which we definitely needed, and got even more delayed when we found out about the typhoon that’s whirling it’s way across South East Asia. The articles we found about it described it as a “Super Typhoon” and said fun things like “it’s equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane” and “it’s stronger than Florence” which is the lad that’s currently on its way the mess up the East Coast that everyone is freaking out about.
The projected path of our friend Mangkhut (the typhoon), is that it’s going to hang out in the Philippines for a hot sec before traversing over to Vietnam and making landfall right next to Hanoi and the making it’s way west across the country.
Remember how I said the only thing we really had planned out was Vietnam.
Guess where we’re flying into.
Guess which direction we’re trying to go from there.
Yeah.
So that was fun. We’re not really sure what we’re going to do, but we called my mom, who used her Super Mom Abilities to help us look into stuff and talk to the people we booked with.
But after we did all that, it was already early afternoon, which is not ideal for traversing. But we have stuff to see and things to do, so we headed out.
One thing that we all agreed on was that we wanted to see the floating markets. One thing that we didn’t know was that all of the floating markets are atleast an hour and a half drive outside of Bangkok. So, like yesterday, we made a very spicy and very very last minute traverse out in a taxi, grabbed a van, and got on our way.
This van ride was significantly longer than the one we took yesterday. I napped a little bit and when I woke up, it was pouring rain and looked a little bit like we were headed into the eye of the storm. Marisa and Kelly were also asleep for the genesis of the rain and had similar reactions to our sudden teleportation into The Wet, but we had no choice but to persevere.
Our stop is at this little shop that’s the only source of light in a twilight sky. The man and woman manning the van station portion of this small oasis are nice and laugh at us (they also guessed that we played volleyball after looking at Marisa) trying to figure out how to get to the market before sending us off with a girl in a school uniform. It’s still raining and she walks us across a street and through an (another) alleyway, carrying her umbrella and not saying a word. There are puddles everywhere that are reflecting all the lights. The alley opens up to a river lined with shops, lights, and boats. She smiles at us and then turns and disappears into the crowd like she never even existed in the first place.
And honestly that was the tone of the whole market. It felt like magic, with all the lights and the food and the rain. There were bridges that arched up and over the market and the river that were the best place to see the entirety of all that was going on, from the ladies cooking full on meals in little boats with umbrellas strategically placed, to the lightning that was flashing in the distance.
We got there pretty late, so a lot of the shops were closing up as we were walking through, which was sad for the experience but good for my pockets. We ended up eating at this beef noodle place that had a big pot of soup in the middle of the floor with all kinds of ingredients surrounding it. When I went to the bathroom I realized that the whole place was built on stilts and is essentially leaning over the river. Which is wild right? The walk ways literally have stairs that lead down to the water.
It’s hard to imagine living there and seeing something that cool everyday. It’s probably lame to them. I’m sure there’s challenges that go along with living on a river and I’m just visiting and looking, but that would be so cool.
Naturally, we spent a little too much time perusing the goods and almost missed our van, but we sprinted back through the rain and caught it just in time.
And now we’re sitting in this van. The rain is still coming down but I can’t see anything. My friends are asleep and I’m out here, typing. I think writing in transit works better than trying to save it all up for when I get back to the Airbnb. It feels more Dramatic too, and you know I’m always here for The Drama.
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