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Published: November 8th 2006
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Well hello there are you fellow farang (foreigners)!!!
We arrived in Bangkok on Sun evening relatively unharmed (just a little tired) from our plane rides - Bali to Singapore, Singapore to Thailand! When we walked away from the baggage collection area we were faces with a wall of Thai people holding up signs and calling out/hoping that you were the name or they we asking if we needed taxi? Okay got past that point and now on to Ash and mine favourite part of a new country...find the ATM to get the money and then figure out how we are supposed to get away from the airport when working with a bunch of non-english speaking people and quite honestly Ash and I arent fluent enough at the Thai (although I did try to learn some on the language learning program on the plane...hahahah!) Caught a bus and it went pretty smoothly! Found Khao San Rd (main, safer tourist hangout) with med difficulty and then found a nice guesthouse around the corner from Khao San...key criteria: CLEAN, quiet and cheap...oh and the fan works ok! Our first night we had dinner and went to get our first feel for Thailand (or
the Khao San Rd area)...The street is closed to cars so its bustling with people, both farang and thai, there are lights, signs, a billions of other things to grab your attention...stalls are layered one on top of another, people wander the streets selling everything, vendours roll around selling pad thai, spring rolls, alcoholic drinks, pancakes and more...
Day two we ventured out on our first day of sightseeing or should I say Wat seeing (temples) and took our first tuk tuk ride! Very quickly in our tuk tuk bartering we abandoned most of what the lets go book said...we agreed to go to a few places that the driver wanted to take us, and we let him make us half-believe the grand royal palace was not open until the afternoon...SCAMERS!!! There are two prices when you tuk tuk - the cheap one is if you agree to stop at the tailor or jewelery place where they will receive a free petrol ticket for taking you there or the "no stop/no shop" price which is about 5x the first price! After day 1 we have forked over the extra dough (usually about $1) to get to the desired location
quicker! The first buddha we saw stood about 40+ m...huge and gold! Then we checked out the grand palace...
**side note: sorry I forgot the lets go book upstairs so I don't have the actual names of these places/wats even though I doubt you would be able to pronounce them either**
Sunday was the festival to mark the end of the rainy season so shorlty after we were at the temple of the emerald budda some member of the royal family was supposed to some and change the dressings of the most important budda in Thailand....so when we saw him he was NAKED!!! The buildings in the compound were unbelievable!!! I have never seen such detail and beauty on the outsides of buildings...there was gold everywhere, mosiac tile and so much more I hope you will be able to see in the photos! (or google it!) All of the paintings are hand done and can be found on walls around and inside the wats... The compound was huge and after about 10000 photos we moved onto Wat Pho (i remeber that ones name) with the reclining buddha - 15m tall by 46m long....MASSIVE and gold with mother of
pearl inlaid design on his feet! another large compound with beautiful buildings and detail! Later that night we again cruised the area around our hotel but it was a holiday so it wasnt as busy as usual...checked out a movie and then went to bed...
Tuesday involved the first big scam...no stop/no shop tuk tuk driver agreed to 40 bot to get us to the Besit Zoo but then about half way he decided to double check with us "70 bot? right?" there was a small street side argument and Ash and I began the walk to the Zoo which really wasn't that far! The zoo was cool as always lots of animals and funny behaviours..this time I got to see albino and reg tigers, leopards, crocodiles and turtles and more! Ash and I loved that there was a 7-11 and KFC in the zoo! (however we did not eat there) from there we needed quick transport to get to the all teak mansion -former home of one of the kings from way back...it had 72 rooms and they were colour coded to help people know where they could go -we both agreed it would have been nicer if
Getting attacked by a 7 mth old elephant!!
At this point there was actually elephant snot running down my forehead!!!??? the wood was untouched...Really it was quite a nice house for the time that it was built...then we headed over to the wat with the marble walls...I didnt even realize it was marble, looked like wall paper to me -dumbass! We had our first food stand meal (pad thai, spring roll and meat on a stick for 60 bot or $2) shortly after and cruised the stalls checking out what we might want to buy when we come back to Bangkok before we fly home! Wathced another movie and headed to bed early to be ready for the early morning today...
Tour day #1: floating market and elephant/crocodile zoo! I'll get the bad parts out first...alot of driving in a van packed full! They drive us to the market in a long motor boat that was sketchy to say the least as we hauled ass past houses and other boats making waves and spray and all i could envision was me trying to save my camera as we fell into the dirty water... We decided to pay the extra couple bucks to get in a smaller boat to cruise through the market...neat experience with everyboat you pass selling food, hats, fruit, glass encased bugs or.... and the boat traffic jam as too many farang try to take it all in and take some pics. We tried some more interesting fruit (starfruit and guava) and just hung out -were both doing so well at not shopping!!- Had some lunch on a river in who knows where with the group and then went to see the elephants and crocodiles!!! Ash was like a 5 year old when we saw that you get to basically crawl on the elephants (or so we learnt be crawled on by the elephants)! Watched a lame magic show...followed by some history and cool tricks from the elephants - a cool show but but you want to see elephants in the wild not really chained up, you know - the elephant soccer and dancing was my fav and at the end you could buy bananas and feed them...outside you could get your photo with some little guys (4 yrs old)....the crocodile show was disappointing -"give me $$ and ill put it and my head into a crocodiles head!"- but the park did have a lot of them, actually 100, 000 so it said in the book and they were big and little guys....ash was hard to tear away from the elephants but we did spend some time with the tigers....you too can have your photo with them for only 100 bot (about $3.50) but do you really want to stand inches away from a tiger?! as Ash said "Canadian girl gets killed by tiger in Bangkok" hahaha maybe next time... On the way home Ash managed to stub her toe for the third time!!! this one was a doozy!!! she broke toe nail and everything-- she claims she was looking back at me to make sure I didnt get hit by a bus???? we decided that she should stop walking from now on when she looking over at something to the side!!!
Tomorrow we are going to take the train up to Ayutthaya and then up to Chaing Mai/Rai and so on...Thailand is good, still warm and giving us lots to do and see! Can't wait to get out of this big city and get a feel for what Thailand is really like....Planning on doing some treks in the north so any of you that have done one I'd love some advice/thoughts...
We heard about the rain issues in Vic....that's too bad... (Debs hope youre not working too hard)
All those November bdays -- have a good one, ill do my best to party for you over here! love you!!!!!
K I think thats enough for today...keep the emails coming and ill try my best to start calling some people, phone is a bit cheaper here but not much!
Love you and miss you all, hope everything is great
Jen and Ash xoxoxoxo
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Norm
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Again you trying to scare us with the tiger stories and broken toe nails. Well it sounds like a great expierence of what you are learnig for your future as a Teacher. I assume it is not all as pretty as you speak with some bad areas and some good. I wish that I could have had such a world wide trip as you are doing. Jen enjoy what evry bit of it as it could be awhile before such another trip. Well Jen we went to see the new puppie(Cav) that we will get in December. Same kind of colors as Penny but just so cute. If I can I will send you a picture. Other then that I am taking Auntie Rose away for the weekend as it is our 25th Wedding Anniversary onthe 14th. Miracle hey. Anyway we love you and miss you lot's. Also spoke to some people at Commonwealth and they pass on their best. Love you Uncle Norm