Friday, May 29, 2009

---

We awoke to a non-rainy day, the first in several days. We took the skytrain to Jim Thompson's house for a tour. He was an American man who moved to Thailand after retiring from the military and fell in love with the country. He was famous for making the Thai silk available at an international level and soon became the most prominent exporter of Thai silk. He mysteriously dissappeared at the age of 61 on holiday in Malasia. His house is now a museum, that is open to the public and his factory is still successfully in business to this day. His house is a beatiful contribution to the old Thai architecture with 6 small authentic houses that were dissassembled and moved to Bangkok to be connected back together to make up his main house. After viewing the house, we took the skytrain to another part of Bangkok to view the store. Afterwards, we headed back to the Vietnam embassy to pick up our visas, thankfully they were approved, and then headed to the airport to catch our flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. We arrived that evening and took a long cab ride to the old part of Hanoi and stayed at the Elegance Hotel.

Notes: They drive on the right side of the road, horns are used in place of turn signals, scooters and motocylces frequently drive the wrong way down the highway, the sidewalks are full of so much trash that you have to walk in the street with the cars and scooters...Scary!, the bars consist of several small stools on the corner of a block with most patrons ending up sitting partially in the street amongst the cars and motorbikes traveling in all directions at the same time.....CRAZY!!!

---