Tuesday May 12, 2009 Bangkok

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1st Impressions of Bangkok = Inverse of Tokyo with charm=)
-Hawkers everywhere touting "Where are you going", "You need taxi", " I take you for a ride on tuk tuk" (Yeah, I bet you will!)
-Roads full of cars, motorcycles, tuk tuks, street vendors (yes in the streets!), and people (because the sidewalks randomly crumble away in some parts)
-Taxis stalk you
-Tuk Tuks want to take you and your wallet for a ride (they get comission from the overpriced stores they deposit you at)
-Everyone wants to sell you something whether you need it or not
-Elevator guy at hotel (yes they employ someone to push a button) keeps asking me where my husband is when I am walking around alone. Am I not allowed to walk around the hotel without him or something?
Breakfast at the hotel is included, no more rice balls.
Our first stop was the laundry place where we easily talked them down from 1200 Baht to 700 Baht, probably still too much but oh well, it was like $20 US.
We went next door to have a Thai massage for 270 Baht ($7-8 US Dollars) for an hour. It wasn't like a massage in the States, no oil was used and it was kind of like a mix between yoga, hard core stretching and a massage. My back did a nasty pop as she was working on it and was sore for the rest of the day, but whatever she did to my feet and legs felt amazing. I should pay her to do that after evey run and I wouldn't have to worry about stretching correctly. Camden looked like he was in pain toward the end of his session, but I'm pretty sure she was standing on him at that point. My lady didn't do that, thank goodness, otherwise I may have thrown her off.
Next we went to internet cafe where I unsucesfully updated my blog. Then we went to lunch at a little cafe that gave us lunch menus as well as over priced spa menus for the joint next door. Next we took the skytrain to the Sala Daeng to the Thai airways office to secure our flights from Phuket, Thailand to Hanoi, Vietnam and somewhere in Cambodia as well. After that we wandered around the area looking through all the fake goodies, nothing worth buying, so we took the skytrain back to Nana to get to our hotel. I was so tired that I fell asleep immediately upon laying my head on the pillow while Camden went out to brave a dinner of swarma (? ) from the street vendors. As of today, Wednesday, he is not sick..."so far so good"

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Photos

Bangkok 1
Photo from river taxi