Bangkok

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Bangkok

***First and foremost, we are safe and Bangkok has no evidence of any violence left..so no one worry about us here!***

To get from Koh Samui to Bangkok was an adventure in itself. We started off in a van from our hotel, mom and I were the first ones to be picked up and we thought there would be no stops. Wrong, we stopped 7 more times, and by the time we got to the ferry we had 14 people plus our luggage packed in the van, strangers were practically sitting on each others laps. We did meet a nice girl from Israel who kind of attached herself to us for the duration of the trip, it was great! The ferry ride was about 1.5 hours, not a very nice boat, but we did meet two very nice British boys. From the ferry we had to board a bus, luckily we had those cute English accents to listen to the 1.5 to the town of Surat Thani.

Okay, here is where the real fun begins...The bus drops us off on the side of the road, literally, and about 10 of us all pile our luggage into the back of a pick up truck, well we were all thinking, where do we sit?? All the girls got into the back seat of the truck but there was no room for me or any of the boys so we all sat on the rim of the truck's back trunk. I don't even think that is legal in the states, but totally normal over here. I was holding on for dear life, and you would understand why if you saw the traffic over here, the way they drive is crazy. The breeze felt nice though since most of our modes of transportation were without A/C and the temp was somewhere around 100F. The truck dropped us off at this hole in the wall bus stop/restaurant where we were all split up. Mom, me and one other guy all got into another pick up truck which drove us for about 10 minutes before flagging down a bus for us to jump into. Well we climb aboard and realize we are on a school bus, all these kids are sitting there staring at us as we lug our suitcases around. All the seats are taken, so we stand for 30 or so minutes while we drop each and every kid off. I would classify our modes of transportation under backpackers only, since our heavy suitcases really didn't fit in, or make things easier.

Once at the train station, 7 hours later from the starting point of the van, we have about 2 hours to kill before the train leaves. Mom and I decide to find something to eat in the surrounding area and settle on a place with all Thai customers.. we figure it must be good, and it was! Except my dessert is still a mystery. The package looked sort of like a vanilla popsicle with coffee beans, or cookies bits in it. Once I bite into it though, I discovered the black substance tasted alot like black beans ...uh what?? Regardless I still ate it of course and it really wasn't bad. So we finally board the train around 9:00 pm in Surat Thani. We had requested first class, which really isn't as wonderful as it sounds. All it means is that we had a room to ourselves so we felt a little more safe. I had the top bunk and mom had the bottom, our suitcases barely fit into the room it was so tiny. At 8:00am we arrive in Bangkok after a restless night of me constantly waking up to the train rattling..I swear it went off the tracks several times. From the train station we board the metro . Once on the metro, mom realizes she can't find the address to the hotel, so we are going on her memory . Since our hotel is new, no one knew where the heck it was and our lack of Thai language and there broken English didn't help. After about 25 minutes of standing at the metro exit, mom decides to get a cab only to find out hotel is literally a block away.

So that may all sound a bit rough but it was so much fun and mom and I laughed through all 24 hours of the journey from Koh Samui to Bangkok.

Once in Bangkok we hit the ground running since I guess mom got a good nights sleep on the train and didn't want to waste anytime.

We first went all the Temples The best ones we saw were Wat Benchambophit better known as the marble temple because the majority of the structure is made out of gorgeous marble, next the The Grand Palace and the Emerald buddha, The one mom and I liked the best was Wat Pho which housed the "reclining buddha," a 46 meter long and 15 meter high buddha that is laying on its side. The feet are made out of mother of pearl as well as the eyes, truly a sight to see.

Next mom and I went on a river ride which lasted about an hour and took us down the back canals, areas which the average tourist doesn't venture into. They are nicknamed "the Venice of the East" because the canals used to be the main way of travel and many people still live along the waters edge.We saw the way many Thai people actually live, in these shacks made out of various scraps of metal, wood, basically anything you could imagine. The canal itself was packed full of huge catfish that were constantly jumping around the boat. Probably the coolest thing we saw were tons of HUGE Komodo dragons just swimming along in the canal, it was so bizarre.

We went to dinner at a restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms. They try to promote safe sex, so everything had condoms on it in the restaurant, hopefully the pictures will be as interesting as it was eating there. It actually was quite tasty too!

Tomorrow we are going to the weekend market!

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Photos

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my weird ice cream with black beans