<Sorry ahead of time for the random punctuations and funny parentheses. The keyboard is different out here. Even the space bar is cut in half!>
6.13 pm Thailand/ 4.13 am US
We have arrived finally and it's pretty freakin' humid out here! We decided to talk a mini walk around the block. Umm.... first of all we didn't know how to cross the street since the cars drive so freakin' fast and don't stop for anyone or anything. So we pretty much walked around in a square. We got tired of that pretty quickly and realized that you have to look quickly and RUN across the street and pray to God that a car won't be careening around the corner while you're in the street. But our walk was pretty boring since all we saw in our neighborhood were jewelry stores, jewelry stores, jewelry stores, Indian Hut <ironic huh?>, KFC, 7-11 <which happens to be like ABC stores in Hawaii>, and more jewlery stores! But our tour guide, Nok, was nice enough to take us around Bangkok even though it wasn't part of the itinerary. Our first stop, other than the hotel, was Pantip <we'll have to check the spelling> Plaza aka "The Computer City" - electronics galore! There were real laptops there for only $400 US! Very tempting but, Ryan, being the rational one, said, "It'd be hard to return something if it doesn't work right." Touche and point taken! Lots of knock-off DVD, MP3, and CD games. And IPods for $30... Hmm...probably not real.
But we did get our first taste of authentic Thai food. It's in a sort-of food court where you order rice and get to pick 1 - 3 dishes. We got water sprouts with pork and bamboo shoots with chicken. Fairly spicy until the last few bites and that's when our noses started running. Even Nok said the dishes were spicy. Oh yeah, and we had beef noodle soup and the broth was one of the best I've ever had.
Off we went to the Bangkok side-street markets. And they were crazy! Motorcycles are driving through them even though pedestrians galore are walking. Tons of clothes, purses, pjs..... you get the point. And then we went into an underground shopping area and got totally discombobulated down there cuz all the vendors look the same! We had to get outta there ASAP cuz we were shopped out from browsing. We managed to catch our 1st Thai taxi by ourselves and it was one CRAZY ride. Talk about close calls in a car. Half the time I couldn't tell where the lanes were and Ryan said he was clenching his toes for the whole ride! Yeah, scary! But we made it back and it was only $4 for the whole experience! Totally worth it!
Anyway, that's it for today. We're off to the Grand Palace and Wat Arun tomorrow! Maybe another adventure for shopping! There's a mall with 500 stores!! We'll see if Ryan lasts there with me. =D
