To Live Is To Fly

Even at 4 o'clock in the morning, the only word that could describe Lacy's feelings about leaving Japan on our big vacation was "jazzed". Notice the hand.

This was our first day in Bangkok. All we had with us was our travel guide and our backpacks. Like any other first-timers, we made our way to Khao San Rd. where we found a decent enough guesthouse to stay in and a melting pot of international travelers. With street venders taking up every inch of the sidewalk, it felt a bit crowded; but the spread of cheap pad thai, fresh fruit, and excellent turkish kabobs made Khao San Rd. a Dangerford favorite.

Getting lost was something that happened a lot, but no matter where we got lost there was always something amazing to see ... or eat. This is just one of the great neighborhoods that we stumbled upon while wondering around. I loved how colorful it was and the big trees.

Had we thoroughly read through Lonely Planet we would have known how to better deal with tuk tuk (kind of like a taxi) drivers. Unfortunately, we believed the man that told us Chinatown was closed until 11 am and let him take us all over town. After the tailor shop he did take us to "the giant buddha" which was neat.

Unlucky for me, that unfortunate experience with the tuktuk driver made Peter ridiculously paranoid that everyone was trying to screw him over. He was very hesitant the rest of the trip to trust anyone (sometimes it was a good thing).

We finally made it to Chinatown and realized how foolish we were to believe that it was closed. Its a town! I think we were just a little overwhelmed and probably a little tired. The first night we spent in Bangkok they had fireworks going on literally right above our hostel till 3am, it was shaking the building.

Here is a picture of a tuktuk. When the owner of this vehicle saw me taking a picture of it he proceeded to tell us that the license plate for his tuktuk cost 100,000,000 baht (thai currency). Converted into dollars that is over 3 million dollars. I think he wanted me to pay him for taking the picture.

The next day in Bangkok we set out to find the Grand Palace, again we were told "it's closed for... eating and praying things." We decided to check it out for ourselves and found that it was open.

The entire palace is covered in gold.

Sorry for taking so long to post about our trip we have been pretty busy. Part 2 "The Depths Of The Cuchi Tunnels" will hopefully be up soon.