Rest day in Chanthaburi

January 7, 2017

I'm glad I decided to spend a day here, as I've enjoyed the city.

I started the day with coffee in the hotel and a quick and successful search for bleach to clean my water bottles. One of the bottles in particular had developed quite a stink. An inquiry in the forums here on CGOAB suggested that disinfecting the bottle was the solution, and bleach sounded like to best bet. I had previously tried to find bleach using Google translate. This time I googled "where to buy bleach in Thailand" and found some expat discussions on the topic. It turns out that bleach is mostly called Haiter, which is a brand name from a Japanese company. I went into the 7-Eleven nearby, and sure enough found Haiter on the shelf. I soaked my bottles in a dilute bleach solution, and headed out.

I stopped for breakfast at the Hotel Kasemsarn, one of the fancier hotels in town. They had a fairly pricey western breakfast, which although I enjoyed, I sort of regretted later. Wandering through the old city there were a lot of food options, and I wished I was hungry.

The old city has houses on stilts by the river, and a lot of historical buildings.

Houses on the river in the old city. Cathedral in the background.

Houses along the river in the old city in Chanthaburi.

There is a sort of local museum showing the history of the old city and its early settlers, called the learning house. The displays and signs were only in Thai, so I didn't learn too much, although the old photos were interesting. An old bike did catch my eye.

An old bicycle in the Learning House in Chanthaburi.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of Chanthaburi is well known and a tourist draw. It is across the river from the old city.

Foot bridge across the river to the cathedral.

It looks like a well kept building. There were a few Thai tourists there, mostly taking photos.

Yes, the woman on the right is posing her dog.

The man on the right told me some history of the cathedral. It was founded 300 years ago by Vietnamese people who had fled religious persecution, and had been restored not too long ago for the 300 year anniversary. The ceiling was designed to look like a ship, to remind people of the origin. The Buddhist monk on the left seemed to be just visiting the cathedral, like me.

I walked back through the gem market. There seemed to be two sorts of shops. At the first, sellers were set up at desks, and would meet with potential buyers.

Others had a display set up.

I didn't buy anything. :)

The King Taksim Monument is close to my hotel, and I wanted to see it. It turns out that I've seen statues of the king previously, and didn't know who it was.

The monument is in a park in the middle of a lake. The walkway around the lake seems to be the place to buy furniture

Furniture for sale near the King Taksim Monument.

Or nice plants.

Plants for sale included some pretty orchids.

At that point it was hot and I was quite sweaty, so I went back to the hotel to cool off.

It started raining at about 4 pm, and has been pouring. I need to figure out if I can get out for some food!

Update: I dug out my raincoat, which had worked itself down to the bottom of my panniers, and asked at the hotel reception where I could go for dinner that was very close. The girl at reception pulled out a map and without hesitation said "go here". I said it doesn't look very close, so she suggested taking a motorbike taxi from the 7-Eleven. That didn't sound like something I wanted to do. I've seen 3 motorbike accidents in the past 2 days, and they've been on dry pavement. So I walked to the restaurant in the pouring rain, a bit over 1 km away. The food was mediocre and expensive. Most of the dishes were marked on the menu as spicy, so I just had a chicken and vegetable stir fry, which was pretty bland. I like the not-spicy that has just a little bit of spice to it. The good thing was that it stopped raining while I was eating.

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