July 26th- Adventures in Bangkok

So we're having a really good time so far; Bangkok is indeed big, noisy and smelly, but it's not quite as bad as I expected. So I'll try to fill you in on what we've been doing the last three days- after the Komodo incident, Ace and I found our way back to our hostel area, took showers and then walked down the block and got Thai massages :) It was GREAT; an hour of wonderfully brutal massage for about 9 bucks :) I'm 99.9 percent positive the massage place also offered "other" services, but we avoided the "lotion" and "shower" massage options and stuck with Traditional Thai. I loved it- she spent about half the time pummeling and yanking on my arms and legs (ever had your ankle popped? Well, now I have!). Ace and I headed back to the hostel and went to bed. At 6:30. We were pretty jet lagged, I guess. We woke up early the next morning, had the fresh fruit and muffin breakfast at our hostel, and went to the river; we hopped on a tourist boat and headed up the incredibly nasty water to the main tourist-attraction area- we spent the afternoon scoping out the incredibly opulent King's Palace, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and Wat Pho (Bangkok's largest and oldest temple). I took a ton of picts and Ace has been taking tons of videos, so we'll get those online for you to see eventually. We hopped another tourist boat back down south, took the lusciously air-conditioned sky train back to our neighborhood, then had dinner at a beautiful restaurant by our hostel. There were orchids on our table :) Ace and I had curry, and the peppers in Ace's were so hot the back of his head was sweating. It was glorious. Then we hit up the nearby British pub, the Pickled Liver, and had shots of Thai whisky. We managed to stay awake until about 10:30 last night. I think the heat is really taking it out of us. Today our reservation at Suk 11 ran out, so had to move to another hostel- this one is YHA hostel Thailand. The rooms are unimaginably tiny, but we got an air-conditioned room and the staff is super helpful and friendly. We also went to the train station and bought tickets for Chiang Mai- I'm super excited for the scenery. Getting to the station was interesting because cabs instantly identify us as clueless sucker tourists. It took us four taxis to finally find one that was willing to start the meter instead of charging us a ridiculously high fixed rate. The way back was easier, though. The Lonely Planet guide has been so helpful- I think I've been approached with almost every scam the book warns about. After that, we went to the weekend market (a ridicuously huge market that reminded me of the souks in Tunisia, except with less harassment). So far, we've seen everything from amulets to dentures to adorable fuzzy puppies for sale in the markets. They were especially fuzzy because the vender kept combing them backwards to ensure their fuzziness. Then we wandered around for about an hour in a half in search of an English bookstore- Ace wanted to find some Thai lit in English. He finally found some sort of novel, so now we're back in our tiny tiny hostel relaxing before dinner. We'll probably go nab some food from a street vender. Tomorrow we've signed up for a tour throught the hostel, which should be nice- it'll be good to have someone who knows what's going on cart our tired butts around for a while. We're going to see the floating markets (people mill around in the canal or river in little canoes filled with fruits, veggies, and crappy souveniers), then a muy thai demonstration (martial arts), then some traditional dance I think, and some other stuff I can't remember. That's about it for now- we'll be heading up to Chiang Mai on Tuesday AM, so we're trying to get everything in.