Our last full day in Bangkok and we had set it aside to join a tour that would take us to an island located about 20kms north of Bangkok, called Koh Kred. This island is renowned for its ceramics and pottery, and for the bargain basement price of 300baht, we were provided with comfortable seats on a tourist boat, an English speaking tour guide and the knowledge that we would be taken to all the places of interest without having to haggle and find our own way.
On the tour, we spoke with a German backpacker who had been travelling on her own for over 2 months (she was doing an internship here in Bangkok) and an English couple who lived permanently in Spain.
Cruising up the Chao Phraya River, we stopped of first at a temple and then next a well-known restaurant that served traditional Thai curries and sweets. An interesting fact about Koh Kred is that whilst it is currently an island, it did not begin this way. In fact, it was part of the mainland but as the need for a canal to widen the Chao Phraya River was needed, this island was separated from the mainland and as the canal got wider and wider, Koh Kred became its own little island. The island is sometimes translated as Koh Kret and is equally populated by Thai locals and Mong people, a group of people who had migrated from Myanmar/Laos, sharing it with a small number of Indian and Chinese immigrants.
We had about 2 hours to wander around the markets on the islands, with some variety of pottery and ceramics, but generally all fairly similar and of designs difficult to distinguish from one another. There were also other stalls selling other merchandise, not dissimilar to what we had found at Chatuchak Markets yesterday.
The cruise back to Bangkok was leisurely and having had a very pleasant day in the much less bustling island of Koh Kred, we had a quiet evening, again having a Thai dinner at the Irish pub, but tonight I taste tested a Singha beer – not unlike a Toohey’s New.
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