Around The World In 72 Days - The No Facial / Night Market Flood Day

 Traveling with teenagers has required the massively planning obsessed Wife and de-I to let go and 'be one with the force'. In the words of the immortal 2.3, when asked what he wanted to do during this trip, "we will figure it out when we get there." And so as it was said, so it has become. 

We threw out a bunch of ideas. We wrote them down on slips of paper. We then proceeded to pick them out (each person taking a turn taking one out). We listed them. Our first choices. Get a facial (yes both 2.3 and I were up for this) and go to a night market for dinner. 

It is an interesting experience having grandchildren who have lived in China for years, have various apps that work better in Asia than most of the apps we use, and who are used to using these apps to both locate options and navigate to same. Off we went.

The weather here is pretty warm and humid during the day, getting cooler at night, and there is a lot of rain on and off. We found the first few options pretty quickly. However, we were put off by the prices that equaled anything we would have found in the US. This led to a more difficult search. We decided we were in a too posh part of town and started to walk back where our apartment was. While the teenage navigation team worked, I killed some time by taking some relatively innocuous pictures of some buildings.

Getting back to our neighborhood, we were tired and wanted something to eat. The grandkids have clearly shown they understand how the food scene works and have been pointing out how this or that (to Wife and I) non-descript place was, in fact, a local joint specializing in X, Y, or Z. We'd been going by this one place that specialized in Soup Noodles because it is right on the way to the Metro. 2.3 had marked it as a place to try.

Getting good pictures of teenagers is a challenge but I managed to get both 2.2 and 2.3 in a shot

We made one more attempt circling our general area to find the vaguely remembered spa without success. Wife and I were both beat so we headed back to the apartment to relax until time to go to the night market. 

Around 5pm we're ready to go but it is raining out. No rain has been called for in the forecast. When it stops we head out. It is a fairly short metro ride to this market. To our surprise it is clearly marked and very easy to find upon exiting.

There is a fairly famous temple right at the entrance to the market (of course you will have to go to Wife's blog to get the name because I can't remember it).

This night market trip was a bit of an experiment. Going to night markets (especially in Thailand) has been a mainstay of the #2 family traveling over the decade they've mostly lived in East Asia. They have a whole process related to it. Night markets are mostly something Wife and I have avoided because of a number of reasons (we don't eat a lot any more, we have very different tastes, we find it hard to figure out what things are, and we don't like staying up late at night). But we very much want to take advantage of our grandchildren's superior knowledge of Chinese culture and learn from them. 

As it turned out it was a mixed experience. Things were complicated by the rain continuing while we were there, the fact that the food scene was very different to the grandkids than the SE Asian markets they were familiar with, and the four of us learning how to communicate and interact. We learned a lot and I think it will hold us in good stead for the rest of our trip. Here is a set of videos that generally capture our experience.