strange day in bangkok

We were leaving Bangkok for Chiang Mai on the night bus that left at 6:00pm, but we had to be out of our place at noon - so we had some time to kill. We did the normal tourist thing and walked up on down Khaosan Road, took a picture with Thai Ronald - but the whole street seemed more empty than it should be. We figured it was just because it was the middle of the day.

So we headed back to our place on Rambuttri Road to find a bar to hang out at until it was time to leave. This is when the fun started. We realized why Khaosan Road was so empty: the Thai Police were doing a sweep of the area with a 100+ cops looking for illegal street vendors. The cops poured down our street in cars, trucks and scooters, taking down any street vendor's shop that was still left and seizing all of their inventory. The restaurant we had frequented the last few days (that was quite established) was even torn down and hauled away.

 

As we sat at a bar watching all of this happen, we realized a cloud of smoke was slowly make its way toward us from the other end of the street. At first we thought something in the Wat (Buddhist Temple) on the other side of the street was on fire but it kept crawling closer and closer until we were right in the middle of it. This is when we realized the Wat was fogging for mosquitoes. Even the cops stopped what they were doing while the fog dissipated, and we spent a few minutes with our noses in our shirts. 

So what looked like it was going to be a boring few hours tuned into quite an eventful few hours which goes to show you never know what to expect when in Bangkok.