Today we decided to go for the Grand Palace at the start of the day. It opens at 8:30, we were there at 8:45 (declined the nice brief walk the taxi guy offered - what's with these guys?) and in search of a guide we didn't find. We bought our tickets and someone actually called a guide for us who certainly did know her stuff. However, she was irritated with something and ran us through the entrance really fast and up to the first structure in no time. Army personn...

On our first day in Bangkok we decided to take a tuk-tuk (you know the kind) to the Grand Palace for a relatively early morning visit. It's touristy and slower and more expensive than a taxi, but we are, after all, tourists. We get close, and seeing the traffic stop ahead of us and the towers of the Grand Palace a not too long walk behind that, we decide to take our driver up on his offer to walk the rest of the way there. I know, we fell for that one, but live a...

We left for the airport at 5:20am in the morning, just a little bit before daylight broke. The roads were largely void of traffic on this New Year's day, and we made it to Singaraja in record time. Having passed just a few scooters on the way, it was a surprise to have to move over into the other lane for about 100 yards in Lovina to swerve around the parked scooters at the market. The market opens at 5am every day, and even on January 1 there already was a good ...