a floating market and biting fish

My three weeks in Bangkok were busy with work but I took a Sunday morning off to visit the floating market at Damnoen Saduak.  I had read mixed reviews of the place, the negative ones describing it as just a tourist trap, others saying it was good fun despite being set up for tourists.  If there had been more time available I would probably have visited this plus one of the more 'authentic' floating markets too, but with limited time I decided that Damnoen Saduak with its easily arranged tours would be good enough.

& the critics are right that it is highly geared towards the tourist trade.  But many, probably the majority, of those tourists are Thai, and whether the vendors are selling vegetables to 'authentic' Thais or hats to tourist Thais doesn't change the fundamental (and photogenic) nature of the floating market.

It also has the bonus of a few attractions that would not be there without the presence of tourists (or at least I very much doubt that your average Thai includes a photo opportunity with a boa constrictor as part of their regular market day)!  I've long been fascinated by snakes, not only are they beautiful but they are also lovely to touch and they feel amazing when they move; I always take any chance I get to handle a snake and this is one of many photos of me over the years with one draped around me.

Later during my three week stay I got the chance to interact with different creatures - the little fish that nibble dead skin cells off your body!  I had long wanted to try this, and seeing a stall with the little tanks of fish, $5 for 30 minutes with your feet and lower legs in a tank I was straight in.  & I have to say that it was one of the strangest sensations I have ever experienced.  Around the more tender parts of my feet I could actually feel the fish biting, although it wasn't painful, just extremely odd.

a day in transit in Tokyo

No sooner was I back from Nicaragua than I had to fly to Bangkok - not an easy trip to do from Panama on an NGO budget.  Going via Europe was too expensive, and routes going the other way, over the Pacific, all involved a couple of nights in different cities or airports on the way there.  To my great good fortune, however, the cheapest of these flights was the Panama-Atlanta-Seattle-Tokyo-Bangkok route - with two nights in Tokyo!!  Having never been to Japan before I was very excited.

I tried to make the most of my day by getting up very early (not difficult given the jetlag) and starting off at the fish market.  Unfortunately it seems neither the tuna auctions nor the general fish wholesale market are now open to tourists, but I was able to get a very tasty bowl of various types of super fresh sashimi in one of the little local cafes surrounding the market.

From there I went to the Hama-rikyu Gardens, a very peaceful park with skyscrapers on one side and the river on the other.  I took a boat from there to the old district of Asakusa, where I discovered matcha green tea (mmm!) before making my way through the old shopping streets to Sensoji Temple, the oldest temple in Tokyo said to have been built in 628.  It was full of people, Japanese visitors (or were some of them Chinese tourists?) taking photos of the shrine as well as praying to Buddha, but it still somehow had a calm and peaceful air.

In the afternoon I moved on to the National Museum, which had an excellent collection from all around Asia as well as from Japan itself.  I ended up spending three hours in there - after which exhaustion kicked in and plans to catch some kind of evening entertainment were shelved.  The next morning's plans were also shelved, or at least thwarted, as I arrived at Yoyogi Park only to be told that the authorities had decided the previous evening to close it because of an infestation of dengue-carrying mosquitoes.

I hadn't known what to expect of Tokyo but really enjoyed my stay there.  It was an intriguing mix of very modern and very traditional.

saying goodbye to Nicaragua

After the Papaturro I travelled along a different river, this time the four-hour boat trip along the Rio San Juan, to El Castillo.  This village, of 1,500 people, lies beside a set of rapids, at the foot of the 17th century castle that gives the place its name.

The town was home to a great Nicaraguan heroine, the 19-year-old Rafaela Herrera who inspired the defenders to victory against a British raiding party after her father, the commander, died.  They could not defy the British for ever, however, and in 1780 another British party, this time led by a 22-year-old Horatio Nelson, captured the fortress.  Most of the conquerors died of dysentery over the next few months, finally abandoning the fortress in 1781.

I spent a couple of hours around the castle as the museum is excellent and there were a few nice birds hanging out in a big fruiting tree.  Then after a long lazy lunch in a restaurant beside the river I took the boat back to San Carlos.

In the evening I went to the little lakeside park to check my emails - the Sandinista government having made it a legal requirement that every town provide free wifi in its main square or park.  There were people around with cameras, and I soon discovered that the president - Comandante Daniel himself - had been expected for the formal opening of a nearby bridge, but that all such events had been cancelled earlier that day as it was felt to be bad form to be celebrating something while a dozen miners were trapped in a mine in the north of the country.  I was very sad to have missed him.  I gave money to the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign in the early 1980s, to support the Sandinistas, and to see one of their main men in person (at that time a leader of the revolutionaries and now president) would have been very nice.

But I went back to my little hostel - $4 for a comfortable little wooden room of my own (with shared, but very clean, toilets and showers) - for my last night in Nicaragua.  The country said goodbye to me in its own style, with a small earthquake (four point something) at 4:30 in the morning...

The nest day I took another boat, to the border crossing into Costa Rica, and then a couple of buses to San Jose where I stopped for the night.  I just had enough time to visit the gold museum the next morning, which I must say was very good, with typical gold objects from pre-Colombian times but also with extensive information, mostly in English.

Then I took the bus back to Panama City.  I'd chosen to take the midday bus and arrive at 4 in the morning (rather than the midnight one) because I was keen to see the scenery of Costa Rica, but I was distracted by the conversation of the man sitting next to me.  He had fought in Nicaragua with the contras, part of an elite unit whose task was to kill Eden Pastora and Daniel Ortega.  Clearly they'd had no success with Comandante Daniel!  I was keen to get information from him about the grenade attack on Eden Pastora, as I don't think it was ever officially confirmed that the US (the contras) were behind it, but he wouldn't talk - claimed that his years there had been stressful and he'd needed psychiatric treatment afterwards for PTSD, so I couldn't push him as much as I'd have liked to.  He wasn't overly impressed to find out I had donated to the Sandinistas but we certainly had an interesting conversation and the journey back home passed very quickly.