Bangkok - second installment

Day Two

Holy cow is time flying already. We actually made it out of the guesthouse yesterday and managed to visit Dusit Zoo and the Marble Temple (Wat Benchamabophit). Both places were pretty neat. If we actually manage to get yahoo working (we're having technical difficulties) we will upload the pictures. The Temple was amazing. I know this will sound stupid, but part of me expected the Temples to be tourist sites - but Thai people actually use them. We saw so many of them come and go. They were praying and lighting incense.

The zoo was nice as well - Paul really enjoyed it. Dusit Zoo is Thailand's largest Zoo. Lots of mother's with their children :) We were surprised to see how close you could get to the animals. Some of them only had a little wooden fence separating the animals from us. It was the closest I have ever been to an crocodile in my life. If I wanted to I could have touched him - but I of course refrained. The weather was sooo hot. I actually had a headache most of the day yesterday and today. I'm hoping that I adapt to this or it's going to be a very long trip!

Day Three

We spent a better part of this day visiting Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace) and Wat Pho (reclining Buddha). We decided that the fastest way to get there would be to take a water taxi. We got lost just trying to find the pier and turned down this fish market. The smell was tough to handle and there were buckets and buckets of live fish just flopping around. I just happened to look over when a woman was cutting the head of one of the fish. I promptly lost my appetite!! :) We finally found the pier and managed with some luck to get on a taxi. The ride was pretty fun - a little stressful trying to figure out which stop to get off at but we made it. Wat Phra Kaew was amazing (and packed full of people) - we have tons of pictures. The place is huge and the detail in the buildings is extraordinary. I have never seen anything like it in my life. The Emerald Buddha was really neat. You weren't allowed taking any pictures inside the wat, but Paul tried to get one from the outside - hopefully you can see it. Before you go into any of the temples you have to take off your shoes and hats. I haven't seen this many shoes before in one place (well other than a shoe outlet factory or something). I was really happy to see that everyone respected the customs (well most people) and took off their shoes. There were some people in the temple that were taking pictures - that bothered me a little bit. They had signs posted everywhere so it's not like you can plead ignorance.

After we finished up at Wat Phra Kaew we headed to Wat Pho, which is the temple of the reclining Buddha. On the way there we had three different Thai men tell us three different ways to get there. Our Let's Go guide warned us of this. I still don't understand why they want to lead you astray, but it worked the first time. By the time we hit the building of National Defense we knew we were way off. We knew that you aren't supposed to pull your map out when you're on the street but we had no choice. We checked to make sure the coast was clear and pulled out the map. I swear, out of NO WHERE, this tuk tuk driver came up beside us and started bugging us. He followed us for a bit and finally gave up, but geez - now I know why you aren't supposed to pull out the map. We finally got there and I must say, it was very cool. I didn't expect it to be so big, but its really huge. We overheard a woman telling someone that it was 15 meters high and 49 meters long! We have lots of pictures. On the back side of the Buddha there are these metal pots - there must have been over 50 of them. At the beginning of the line of pots there was a donation box and a little bowl full of coins. We saw a Thai woman donate some baht and take a bowl of coins. She then proceeded down the line of pots and dropped one coin in each pot. As we watched this Paul remembered an episode of The Amazing Race that took place in Wat Pho. He remembered that the bowl of coins had exactly the right number of coins per bowls and if you did it right and didn't miss any metal pots, that your bowl of coins would be empty by the end. We watched the woman for a while, but it took a really long time for her to finish up her bowl so we left :)

While we were taking the water taxi back to our guest house it started to rain - and I mean rain. I have never seen rain like that in my life. We got back to Thewet pier (which is close to our guest house) and we were stuck there for over an hour. Once it let up a bit we decided to brave the 10 minute walk back. We were SOAKED by the time we reached our room. Most of the roads were flooded so we had no choice but to walk through shin deep water. Kinda gross. :P A special thanks goes out to my mom - she convinced me to bring garbage bags and man are we glad that she did. It kept our back packs from getting soaked. Thanks mom!!!

After we dried off we had a nice dinner of stir fry and pad Thai and called it a night. Paul tried some local beer and I had a fairly girly drink (except it must have had three kinds of alcohol in it because I wasn't feeling to great after that).

Day Four

Well here I am to today. We were supposed to take the bus to Ko Samet today , but we weren't quite ready to brave the bus system yet. We also didn't feel like traveling yet. We decided that we were going to take it easy today. We had a lazy morning and right now I'm sitting in an Internet cafe on Khaosan Road (there are lots of guesthouses and tourists here). It actually made us both feel better to see more white people. Where we are staying there aren't very many. Neither of us expected it to be so hard to be a minority as it is. Each and every day we are getting used to being here though. We are hoping to get some shopping done today. My sandals suck! I need to pick up some shoes and some cotton pants (my quick dry pants are too big for me... go figure). Paul is going to try and find a couple of shirts too. I hope our bartering skills are up to par!

Tomorrow we will be leaving Bangkok - for sure this time and heading down south to Ko Samet for a few days. We will write again in a few days from there. Love to you all.

Correne