Chaos in Bangkok!

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We've been in Bangkok now for 3 days. It's a very big, overpolluted busy city. But it's got a certain charm to it that I like. We took a local bus to a place called Khao san Road. It's basically a backpackers hangout that erupts into a giant street party each and every night. It's pretty cool, but not real Thailand. We stayed in a hotel there and the next night we moved into more of a local neighborhood. Much quieter!

The first thing we noticed after getting here is the price of everything. It's incredibly cheap! Jasmine and I can have dinner and drink for 60 cents each. Cabs anywhere in the city are less than $2.00 and our hotel with air conditioning is $4.00 each. It's really nice to.


Our first day we got ripped off. It was really an impressive scam. Someone invited us into a temple telling us that today it was free due to some celebration. We walked in, saw how nice it was and walked out. He started talking to us, and explaining how he was from the temple. He mentoned how we should see how the thais make their clothing. He also told us all the scams and what to pay for a 1 hour tuk tuk tour around the city. He called one over aqnd offered 40 bhat (about $1.20) It was accepted and the driver took us to some beatiful temples inside the city. He'd always wait for us until we're done seeing them. Then at the end he brought usto some tailor where they sell men's suits. It was confusing and we laughed about it but went inside anyway. The guy asked if we wanted to buy a suit, we said no and he asked us to leave. Tehn the driver brought us back to Khao san Road!
The scam was he gets paid a comission for every tourist that goes into the tailor shop, of course nobody will go willingly so they trick you with weird tours.
The funny thing is it was worth the 60 cents each they scammed us for their fake tour......weird!! haha

I also tried my first bug today, some sort of larvae the street vendors were selling. Tasted kind of like a stale cheezie. It's going to take a while before I start eating the scorpions and tarantuala's haha



During the day we go site seeing. For example yesterday for 10 cents we took a river boat to China Town. it was a great experice but will never go back. I've never seen such overcrowded skinny streets. You couldn't move, and to make things worst there's street vendors, motorbikes, wagons and all kinds of raondom stuff somehow pushing their way through the crowd. The pollution is leaded gasoline shooting black exhaust into your face. Not a great feeling in the crazy heat. As I said it was neat to see but I had to get out of their quick!

The poverty is very evident here. Street people everywhere. A lot of scams around but for the most part people are very friendly.

Today was much more cooler and touristy. We went to the Grand Palace. It's a huge complex of enourmous golden temples with a lot of history. It's really something you have to see with your own eyes to apreciate how amazing it really is.



We're headed to Laos tonight on the overnight sleeper train. Originally we were going to go to Northern Thailand but it's flooded really bad right now so we're doing this part of our trip backward.

To see more pictures click here http://s124.photobucket.com/albums/p20/AGROculture/?sc=1&addtype=local

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Photos

Grand Palace
Pictures can't do this place justice

Bugs mmmmm
Some stalls have frogs and scorpions!

at The Grand Palace
It's just too crazy here. You could spend all day here taking photos and not get everything

Jasmine with Ronald McDonald
The burger buns are made out of rice. I don't eat McDonalds but I really want to try it!