Bangkok in a week

We made it! Lani and I successfully reunited in Bangkok and we haven't stopped sweating since our arrival. I know that I am slow to post, so I will make this short and sweet and try to encapsulate the major points. We spent a couple days in Bangkok - lots of traffic, horn honking and cement buildings to give it a real BIG city feel. We played tourists one day with a boat trip on the Chao Praya river (which is on the western side of Bangkok) and saw Wat Pho - the largest reclining Buddha in Thailand and visited the Grand Palace/Emerald Buddha. There's a lot of Buddha going on in the lives of Lani and I these days.

We did a quick weekend trip up to Kanchanaburi which is famous for the Bridge over the River Kwai. It was a nice town - an escape from the city and madness. Not to mention, you can't really complain about a $5/hour foot massage now, can you? Also in this cute little town we dined out on the floating restaurants, which was quite an experience. We ordered "chicken" coconut soup. Turns out chicken translates into squid, scallops, shrimp, and several other sea creatures. Oh well, the food is all a part of the experience.

As most of you know, Lani and I aren't too keen on planning. We are not really planning this trip, just letting it take us where the wind blows. Well because of that, we couldn't get a flight out of Bangkok to Phnom Penh, Cambodia until Wed. Therefore, we had a full day left in Bangkok and we decided to go to Ayutaya - which is the old capital of Thailand and pretty much just has a lot of ruins - as the temples/structures were destroyed during a Burmese invasion. It's in the "1000 Places to see before you die" book, so we just had to go. When we got back, we realized that it really made no sense to even go to sleep that night, since we had to catch a bus to the airport at 4 a.m. So, it was our first night of going big, and let me tell you, we weren't so impressed. Here, on the main backpacker/tourist street called Khoa San Rd, the bars/dance clubs closed at 1:30. What?! We were utterly disappointed with the night scene here, but since we'd run into a few Irish fellows, they took us down the street for some drinks and pool - which did end up successfully biding our time until 3 a.m.

And that pretty much captures our first week of travel...and did I mention, we're still sweating?!