Day 8 and 9 : Bangkok and the Grand Palace

We'll, this is the first post I've ever written, and knowing how much Mike likes doin this, I'll probably let him write most of it. Anyways, WE ARRIVED IN BANGKOK!!! I think I left about 45 pounds in sweat around the country all ready. IT IS HOT!!!, that's good if you're with a lady, not good if you're in the jungle. The city is humungous, and we've only seen a small part of it.

Got to our Hostel at about Three O Clock yesterday, and then hit up Khao San Road. For those of you who aren't in the know, that's a little street market road where a lot of travellers congregate. Amazing deals on everything from trinkets and food, to jeans. Nevin and I are already thinking about all the amazing clothes we can bring back home at fractions of the real price. Any requests should be sent via e-mail to either Me or Nevin, but we do not guarantee the quality of our goods. After walking around for a while, and dying of the heat, we hit up an open air streetside restaurant, and had some good Thai food. Nevin and Mike both sat in awe at the sight of their very first ladyboy, oooooh. I think the farmboy in Nevin was more than freaked out by the large gay population.

After supper, we all head back to the hostel to take a little rest in the air conditioned room. I'm pretty sure this country would be uninhabitable without AC. After slightly recovering and downing a few litres of water, we went up to the rooftop patio on our hostel to endulge in a great view, and a litre of beer for only TWO DOLLARS! It was nice to come back from a day of extreme heat and enjoy a game of crib and a beer, with lizards running about all around us.

Today was pretty touristy. Woke up relatively early to try and watch the oiler game, only to find out that the closest thing the Thai's know to hockey is soccer in England. We kept up at the start of the game watching the play by play on the internet, and then got tired off sitting there and head off for the day. We walked over to the Grand Palace, after taking a slight detour to try and find a bridge we saw from the rooftop restaurant the night before. It turned out that we're horrible guides, and all we really accomplished was getting lost and ending up at a University in the middle of Bangkok. We stopped for a drink, and were soon on our way again.

Eventually did end up at the grand palace and I can honestly say it is one of the most breathtaking things I have ever seen. The palace itself, and the building that houses the emerald buddha is unbelievable in its architecture and craftsmanship. Seeing the emerald buddha from so close was almost amazing enough to make me switch to buddhaism. Don't worry, we took lots of pictures, Mike even snuck a picture of the emerald Buddha with the zoom on his camera from outside the temple. The whole time that Mike and I were running around taking pictures, Nevin was busy dying from the heat.

Wandered down to the river after that and caught a boat taxi over to the train station to get our trip to Chiang Mai figured out. Got the trip planned, including a stop in Ayuthaya, and we even planned our three day jungle trek in Chiang Mai through the same company. After that, we decided to get a bit dangerous and take a Tuk-Tuk back to Khao San Road. A Tuk-Tuk is like a motorcycle, turned into a trike, with a three seat buggy over the two back wheels. It's loud, and the pollution smells almost as bad as the driver. We took a video from the back of the Tuk-Tuk just so we could scare the parents a bit. (the driving is a little bit worse than we are used to.) After that, walked up and down Khao San again, and Mike brushed up on his bartering skills. Even managed to talk one guy down from 380 Baht to 300 Baht, which converts to about $9 ( pretty good for a nice belt.)

That's our day so far, and it probably wont bring any more big surprises. We may do a riverboat tour, but it should be pretty tame. Probably won't have any contact tomorrow, but will probably post again in a couple days. We took too many pictures to post here but we've added a slideshow just for today.

Talk to you then,

Luke