Day 1 Thailand

So we're just starting day 2 in Thailand!!! Woo HOO!!!!

We landed at 6:30am local time after a 17 hour flight and headed directly to our hotel on Khao San Road in Bangkok. It was too early to check in, so they told us to come back at 1pm. We were in Bangkok with NO idea what to do. We decided first things first to eat food and try our first authentic Thai iced coffee!!

After a nice breakfast, we headed out to explore. After meeting 2 men both telling us to go see standing Buddha, we decided we should. One man, a college student told us that the yellow Tuk Tuk's were on sale. They were 20 baht for all day!! That's equivalent of $.80! So, we hired a Tuk Tuk and we started sight seeing.

We headed to the standing Buddha which is over 40 meters tall....We bought birds in a cage, which, if you let them go in front of the Buddha, it's supposed to be lucky. We did this, lighted incense, and added some gold leaf to the Buddha's toe.

After our experience here, we headed to a travel agency.

An excerpt from an email we sent yesterday in the travel agency:
"We spent about and hour and a half in the travel agency trying to book our time here wheeling and dealing. Looks like we'll both be taking a PADI diving course on one of the most amazing dive islands in the world (Koh Tao), staying in amazing hotels, going on a 2 day 1 night trek, going to the golden triangle, seeing some monkey town, seeing the long neck women...and they're meeting us at all airports/train stations with our names on cards...CRAZY!!

I just looked at Jeff and asked him...are we crazy to do this on not having slept for 48 hours?!?! Who knows! It sounds like it will be amazing!! This is a government travel agency...so it's all safe!

We have a tuk tuk driver who is driving us around all day for 20 baht which is equal to 80 cents!!!! He drives us and waits for us wherever we go! Off to another temple now. We feel like we're in Disneyland!"


After leaving the travel agency, we headed to "Lucky Buddha," which is only open to the public 2 days a year...and we saw it!!!! We're lucky!!! We ran into a man here who told us to go check out Sapphires and Rubys, because you can buy them and not pay export tax on them. We went to this one store.....and looked at a ton of gemstones- but because we know nothing about them, we decided not to buy! We were afraid of getting ripped off!

Next our Tuk Tuk tuk us to to a tailor to talk about a tux (thank you Jeff for that alliteration humor)---but at this point, I was tired, and couldn't focus on the thought of getting measured, etc etc...so we decided that getting clothing made should be saved for day 2. So...Mr. Tuk Tuk took us back to D and D inn, where we checked in around 3pm. Jeff headed upstairs to the roof deck to see about massages. He found out that an hour massage is 300 baht or $10USD!!!! So, in a gazebo on the top of our hotel, we each had our first Thai massage in Thailand. After an hour of extreme wonderfulness, we headed to our room to take a quick nap, before checking OUT of our hotel at 5pm! Jeff had haggled with our travel guy to get us in a 5 star hotel for our first night as well! And guess what?!?! It's a hotel that my Grandmommy and Granddaddy stayed in 20 years ago while they were visiting Bangkok!

A driver came and picked us up from D &D inn...and dropped us off at Menam (Bangkok's Riverside Resort Hotel.) We went to the concierge to check in- and they informed us that we were VIP and told us our check in would be on the 16th floor. We followed the woman up to the 16th floor and saw a beautiful view of Bangkok and were greeted with a cold cloth and warm grape juice. We sure felt like "honeymooning vip's"!

After our check in, we headed to our room where we were greeted by swans kissing (made of towels) and orchids everywhere and a nosegay of roses, which the woman gave to Jeff to give to me! We have a GORGEOUS view of the river- and kinda want to stay in our room instead of venturing because it's SOOOO beautiful! BUT.......too much to see and too little time!!!! Relaxing time comes after our trek up north and before our SCUBA diving down south!

So, we took a brief (1 1/2 hour) nap, before waking up to eat! We went to this really cool outdoor restaurant, where we picked what we wanted to eat from the fish tanks. (We chose the meanest looking lobster!!!) This restaurant had live Thai music and dancing. It was very romantic, and a fun place to people watch. We thought we were going to head to the night market next, but it was closed for some reason...so instead we Tuk Tuked our butts home to sleep!

Here it is 9:30am...we've enjoyed a leisurely morning with complimentary breakfast on our VIP floor with really good usual fare plus Dim Sum, Fresh Cheeses and crazy exotic fruits (that we've never seen before), and Thai style donuts!

We're off to explore our day 2 in Thailand!

We'll keep you posted!

Much love,
Nina (and Jeff)

ps- tomorrow Jeff will write and I'll retrieve food!

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