Bangkok, Thailand

We arrived on Monday at 1am, promptly found a place that sold simcards, called a couple guesthouses and confirmed one place. We took a taxi there, noticing that Thailand does its best to prevent people from scamming you at the airport. The guesthouse was clean, but pretty institutional, so we figured we'd find a better one later that night. On the first day, after breakfast, when we were trying to figure out what to do, a nice lady (an English teacher!) gave us loads of advice on different temples and directed us to a tuk-tuk that would take us around for only 20 baht. It ended up being a little more and a little weird/scammy at one point, but we pretty much got to see what we wanted in just a couple hours. We also got the rest of our trip planned through the flight and visa to Vietnam. A pretty good start.

Later that day, we found a much nicer guesthouse of comparable value, figured out how to take the bus, visited Chinatown and the flower market and then walked around the touristy foreigner neighborhood of Khao San Road. The next day we didn't feel like doing touristy stuff at all, took a late breakfast/lunch, took a ferry across the river to Thonburi, and hung out with Thais just reading by the river. We walked through their food market, got some delicious street food/dessert, and walked back over the bridge to our hood. In a local public park, we watched some kids breakdancing. (I got a little nostalgic for NYC.) Later, we met some fellow travelers staying at our guest house and ate dinner with them. They were from Milan, and had been traveling through Asia for a year. We got a ton of advice from them, then later went to get a drink at a bar with live music. All in all, our two days in Bangkok were filled, even though we never felt busy or rushed. In the morning, we set out for Ayutthaya (named after Ayodhaya) which is the old capital of Thailand with ancient temples.

Here are the pics from Bangkok: https://picasaweb.google.com/chaitalikapadia/BangkokForBlog?authkey=Gv1sRgCKqh-9zKi9LNdw&feat=directlink Though we didn't do everything we would like to, we are going to be back July 8-10, so we should have some time then.