Bangkok, end of day 5

We are back at our hostel in Bangkok after 5 days of MUCH walking around and seeing the city, including some of the notable areas outside of the city, such as the floating market and an elephant show. We have had a very good time overall, excepting a few moments when we got a little duped when it came to a cab ride. The first cab ride we got was pleasant because the driver was a true blue buddhist monk; we could tell by his ID photo. Coming back, however, our cabbie gave us a "ride to nowhere" by driving us around a bit, taking the long way before actually arriving at our destination. The other less-than-desirable thing has been the boat service, which we primarily noticed today. There are no set times for the boats; they just kind of wait for them to fill up at either end of the line, and everyone in between just has to wait until it arrives. So ferrying up and down the river - although cheap and mostly efficient - has been a very minor source of irritation. And the only other thing that has not been entirely perfect was when we paid for a tour for traveling outside of Bangkok to see the sights, but the guide merely carted us around so that we could pay for even more things as we went along, even though we paid roughly $30 each for the tour. Oh well, we did get to see a lot of good sights along the way, so it wasn't really that bad at all.

On the positive side - the heavier by far of the two - we have thoroughly enjoyed being able to go to street vendors for fresh "exotic" (yet commonplace here) fruit - such as mango, papaya, dragon fruit, star fruit, mangosteins, and many others that I can't even remember; street vendors also sell many, many varieties of delicious Thai food, including, but certainly not limited to pad Thai. We have eaten a variety of fishes, curries, noodles, soups, or sauces, all for very cheap. It usually takes about $3-$6 total to feed both Kaitlin and I at a given meal from a street vendor. Furthermore, we have been eating a many restaurants that are also very affordable; we can eat for $6 or we can splurge and eat extraordinarily well with only $12. I cannot emphasize how delicious things are here. The only issue with the food is that we often have a hard time finding a good deal of vegetables when we eat out; for example, today we went to a nice restaurant in Banglamphu, and we each ordered a salad. Luckily, Kaitlin's papaya salad seemed pretty veggie-dense, even though we didn't quite know what was in it ( but it was good). My salad consisted of shrimp and pork in a spicy lime sauce in one dish and all of the mixed veggies on another. The only issue was that all of the mixed veggies were deep fried, probably negating any nutritional advantages of being vegetables. Other than that, we have had literally no complaints about food. Everything has been great. We have even had a lot of fresh fruit drinks that are out of this world.

One possibly negative experience that turned into a very positive one occurred as we were trying to make our way on foot (which would have been a lot of walking) to The Grand Palace, but we got stopped by a seemingly friendly man who talked with us about the city much and hailed us a Tuk Tuk, our first one that we rode. The man said he worked for the post office, and to this day we don't know if he was truly helpful or if he was somehow connected to the Tuk Tuk driver or the travel agency he sent us to. He could have just been trying to help, but we would feel naive not to remain a little dubious. The Tuk Tuk ride was lovely and all, but it took us well beyond our intended destination. However, this turned into a very positive experience when we purchased tickets to paddle around in some duckies in the lake in Lumphini park, a great park that was just outside of the travel agency (we didn't buy any tickets there) where we went to just relax and not stress about the fact that we had so easily been derailed; also, we both are go-with-the-flow sorts of travelers, so the preceding event didn't really shake us that much, and we were still having a good day. Anyways, while paddling around, Kaitlin noticed something creeping along the bank of the pond, so we went closer to find what we thought to be a kimodo dragon, and it was eating a fish that it caught. Soon afterwards, another kimodo dragon came out of the water, obviously looking for a food via some kind of confrontation with the other, but the second kimodo was not sneaky enough as the first got away to eat his/her lunch is peace. As we kept paddling around, we found that the very water we were paddling around in was full of dragons, so we made sure not to run our fingers through the water...

So far I have bought two books written by Thais and translated into English; one is called, The Way of the Tiger, and the other is called Four Reigns. I have not finished either, but I will let you know how they are at a later time. I greatly look forward to reading them both because they will give me a little bit of insight in their own ways about the national identity that is Thailand.

One highlight of our day today was when we were walking around in Chinatown, we actually found a grocery store. I know there must be more around, and we very well could have walked right by some, as many things here are in Thai script, but on the whole, we think that many people depend much on the markets here in Bangkok for buying goods and stocking up in bulk products, and so grocery stores have not really been terribly important to people. We had a very good time going around the grocery store today just wandering around for about 30 minutes, looking at all the different foods (like cuttlefish crackers/snacks). Although we did not get too adventurous - as we were far away from our hostel and any pepto bismol - we did get some yummy tea drinks and all the pocky flavors we could find.

Places we have visited so far have been Wat Arun, The Grand Palace, the floating market, Wat Pho, Lumphini Park, The Temple of the Emerald Buddha, several shrines - often of other cultures than Thai, such as Vietnamese.

We have seen many interesting things while here in Bangkok. Coconuts fallen in parks, in dirty canals, in the main river, and just lying around - we have seen dentures being sold in the streets at markets, and we saw a man working on dentures as well just beside his stand; we think they are made using real human teeth, but we could be wrong. Often we find that the economic setup here is very different from where we came from. On one hot day, we went into a McDonald's - a McCafe, to be more precise - and we ordered a couple of icy chocolate drinks to help cool us down, only to realize that the price of the two drinks put together cost the same as our rent at Suk 11 (our first hostel) for one night! We vowed to avoid spending money at such "exorbitant" places from then on, although we have indulged in DQ ice cream and a movie in a theater since then.

The humidity here is very dense, but luckily we have had A/C in our hostels up until this point, so it has been very easy to get some comfortable sleep. As we walk along - or even as we leave our A/C rooms, we realize that sweating is inevitable, and eventually it becomes something you don't really notice. We both generally have a constant gleam as we go about our day-to-day activities. While eating some rice noodles today for my second lunch (the portions here are small, which I think is a good thing, even if you have to eat more times during the day), I found myself sweating even more profusely after seasoning the soup with a generous portion of chili powder and chili sauce. Kaitlin laughed at me for having sweat dripping down my nostrils as I ate.

We have ended our fifth day by returning to the hostel and taking care of our blisters from all the walking we have been doing. (Thanks for the athletic tape mom!) At this point, we feel we have sufficiently seen the city over the course of five days: we have mastered the sky rail system, the boat ferry system; we've seen the majority of major tourist attractions in this area, and we have seen more markets, street vendors - selling food and goods alike - temples, and shrines than you could shake a stick at. We feel very happy about these last five days, and we are glad that we were so prepared for everything, thanks to all the wonderful help and moral support of our families. So thank you all again for everything, and I will update again soon!