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 and learn and it was a nice short walk.

Along the way smiling happy people interrupt the walk several times, and a few of them tell us the Grand Palace isn't open until 1pm, since this special morning it is closed for a Thai celebration and thus only open to locals. I didn't quite believe it, but after a couple of these guys we decide to take a side-tour and then come back around lunchtime. So he hooks us up with a 100 Baht (~$3) hour+ tuk-tuk to take us to the three critical Buddha statues in Bangkok: the seated Buddha (for good job), the standing Buddha (for good luck), and the reclining Buddha (for good fortune/money). Little did we know that we are now in bed with the tuk-tuk mafia. They pick up unsuspecting tourists like this all the time and force a ride on you that you didn't think you were going to make getting out of bed that morning.

Was it a bad thing? Not at all! We found our driver Lanang a most charming man who worked hard for the money. He took us to three temples (only 1 of which we could later find on a map, and I looked hard online…) and we did see the three said Buddhas. What made it special, though, is that there were no tourists at any of these temples. None. Zero. Zilch. We had the temples to ourselves. That made this a little bit more of a special experience. We took a good 90 minutes to run around and were then dropped off at the Grand Palace (after declining the short walk proposed for the second time - we do learn).

Wondering around some more until about 1:30pm, we finally tried entering the palace, but it was so enormously crowded we abandoned the mission and decided to go to Siam Paragon for lunch instead (thank you Kory). A massive food court experience on the base floor offered us so many local and international choices, it was a good thing we were hungry and thus capable of deciding quickly, or we would have spent most the day there. Pho it was, and delicious it was, too.

We rounded out the day with a visit of the 8,000+ store mall of centralwOrld, adjacent to our hotel. Yes, you read that correctly: over 8,000 stores spread out across 8 floors. Loosely (very loosely) organized by category by floor, you easily get lost here. But if it isn't here, you probably don't need it.

We enjoyed sunset at the hotel's pool on the 26th floor. Half the height of the prior evening, and with just 8 people around, it was a nice relaxing way to ring in the evening. Our evening, however, was kinda lame, since Liz had developed a cold and throat infection, and she really just couldn't go anymore.