Heading downtown to Chinatown

My friend Julianne and I decided to do a 'bangkok free walks' tour of Chinatown on Tuesday night. Our 'free walk' guides met us off the Hua Lamphong MRT. They took us to the official entryway of Chinatown  (marked by a big colorfully decorated archway), to a temple with the largest all gold buddha in the world. (Sidenote: the Burmese invaded Thailand and were stealing everything made of gold, so the Thai people collected all of the gold they had left to make this statue and covered it in plaster so that the Burmese wouldn't steal it.) We then got to visit a smaller Chinese temple built in conjunction with a free hospital. There is a ritual at the temple in which people take a cup of numbered sticks, sit on the ground in front of the goddess of mercy and concentrate really hard on something they would like to know about their life. Then, they shake the cup until one stick falls out. The number on the stick corresponds with a number on a scroll that explains their fate. It was amazing how accurate my "stick prophecy" was. Then it was time for the food. We got to try an amazing fish soup (the fish is dried for over one year!) Then a pork soup with chamomile tea, pad thai and fried mussel omelettes. For dessert we had iced chocolates (a favorite of mine!), sweet bread with condensed milk, sweet bread with green goo ( cannot for the life of me remember what it's called!) and sesame balls in ginger tea. I absolutely despised the final dish and it took everything I had to keep a straight face while trying to swallow the sesame balls. Our tour guides were absolutely fabulous- a married couple from Bangkok who decided they wanted to practice their english, while exposing foreigners to local culture and locals to foreign culture- so they started the business 'free bangkok walks'. It was definitely an experience I would reccomend for a tourist or a local!