A day in Bangkok

What a day...that turned into the early hours of the morning.....It started out in perfect form, a short walk to the Grand Palace...just one road to cross that turned out to be uncrossable! After 30 minutes of attempting we finally found a stop light and made a mad dash before the motorcycles and tuk tuks ran the light. Thinking we had found good luck we headed back towards the Palace. The 'good luck'bird seed vendors would not take no for an answer insisted they 'give us' dried corn to feed the hundreds of birds following them around...Mistake number one was actually letting them give us the seeds but the bigger was actually feeding the birds! Hundreds of them dive bombing for corn! So once we had our 'good luck', the vendors wanted to be paid for the corn, which of course was not about to happen...they were not impressed and insisted we give them back the plastic bags and again pressing for money....only the birds got lucky...

Once near the palace, we were told several times that it was either time for the monks or only open to Thai people....before we could object one more time, a kind man insisted that he find us a tuk tuk drive to take us to all the temples we really did not intend to see....the rest of the day was spent dashing around Bangkok to one temple or another, each time thankful we made it though another traffic circle...In Bangkok, traffic rules seem to be guidelines as are the lines on the streets...each time we stopped we were swarmed by all of the motorcycles, reving their engines for the entire time....after surviving our first tuk tuk abduction we headed for lunch and then another attempt to see the Palace...once again we had to cross the uncrossable street so we allowed a happy tuk tuk driver to give us a ride for a single baht...which all sounded good until we got into the tuk tuk and headed away from the palace! Completely the wrong way, our driver informed us that he needed a favor...Just go into the suit shop and look around so he could get a free gas coupon...not overly happy with the situation but really no where else to be nor any way to get out of it we when and looked at suits....the favor done, time for the palace..except there was just one more stop, to look at silver, for another free coupon....again, no choice so off we went...finally after the 3rd favor stop, enough was enough and we got close enough to the palace for the tuk tuk driver and he dumped us out....only block from where we had started 45 minutes before...so having spent the day riding around in tuk tuks, we were amazed to see and wondered what it took, for a tuk tuk driver to get a ticket from the police. We never did make it into the palace...

After nap it was out for a look at the night life on Khosan Road....oh and what a night life it turned out to be! One led to another and then another and well then it was very late....thankfully missing the bus to the airport did not matter and a taxi was faster and the same price.....

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