Bangkok!

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The next day was more tiring than fun. We went to a ton of shops that obviously paid the travel agency to take the groups to. First we went to a bee place where they sold honey products for health and beauty and eating. Then there was a giant jewelry store that had its own short ride reminiscent of Spaceship Earth about the history and creation of gems. I actually enjoyed the ride, hehe. Then we went to a zoo where we saw a pig that did math, pig races, a scorpion queen, and tons of other animals. This zoo is most well known for its tigers. Since I’m allergic to cats, I stayed away. We made a pit stop at a random roadside market where there was a ton of dried meats and fruits. Then we went back to Bangkok. The first place we went to was another store with a sales pitch. The store was an herb place where they grow and sell pills and crap. Really boring. o_O After that, the last and final crappy store we went to was some leather store with handbags and whatnot. It carried a huge selection of these ugly fish scale bags. Mommy said this place would’ve been better for older women.

For dinner they took us to a huge beer garden and plaza called the Suan Lum Night Bazaar. On one side was food; on the other side was a line of beer stands. They were showing the World Cup on two screens on either end of the garden and there was also a stage where they had singers. It was pretty neat overall. There were shops all around and a Ferris wheel somewhere in there.

After a long day of doing crap, we finally got to the Dynasty Hotel in Bangkok. This is a nice hotel; I like it. I just wish they had wireless internet.

So our last, big day in Bangkok was more relaxing. We didn’t have to leave the hotel until 10:30 am, although we did go to a weird place at first. We went to a snake… place. I don’t know what it was called. But there were tons of snakes in cages and this snake handler was dealing with some king cobras and it was pretty freaking cool. Made me think of Simeen. Then they shuffled us into a building nearby where they tried to sell us snake oil and pills. Stupid salesmen.

Afterwards, the bus dropped us off at a mall but we didn’t stay there for very long. We walked a couple blocks down the street to see a four-faced Buddha. Apparently it’s a huge religious site but it’s really funny to see it in the middle of the huge city that is Bangkok. It’s not a very big Buddha although it is decorated very nicely, but the people of Thailand believe that this particular statue is magical. If you pray to it you will get what you want but you have to promise to do something in return. There’s a story that a major Thai actress prayed to the statue asking to become famous within the next two years and of course, she got famous. Unfortunately for her, she promised to dance naked in front of the statue in return but she never did so her career was ruined or something like that. There were a lot of people praying to the statue, it was pretty neat.

Then we went on a boat ride up and down a river. The river doesn’t connect to the ocean so it was all brown and murky. We saw everything from modern buildings to historical buildings to shanties. The shanties were actually pretty neat to see because of the numerous deteriorating wooden columns holding them up in the river. We also saw some poor people bathing and some random kids swimming around in the icky water. At one point we were given the option to buy a loaf of bread to feed to the fishes. I thought that maybe we were going to some fish farm or something but instead we just went to this one part of the river where these giant fish were swarming. They might’ve been carp or catfish; we’re not sure. Either way, there were so many fish and they just kept swimming up to eat all our bread. It was awesome. I tried throwing a banana peel at them too but they just nibbled at it.

That was basically our day. We had a hot pot dinner and it was a Friday night in Bangkok so traffic was terrible. The next day, we flew back to Hong Kong. The plane ride was nice. Marty and I watched Ultraviolet on our little screens. Weird movie, neat effects.

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