Relatives,

The first thing we did today was visit the Grand Palace complex and Wat Phra Kaew (wat is the Thai word for temple). My expectations were rather low because everyone who I spoke to about Thailand said that there wasn't much to do in Thailand other than shopping... However, I was completely blown away by the complex of temples and palaces. I can't even begin to describe the intricacy of design in the structures. The one main theme though was that everything was either completely gold or highlighted with gold - quite the opposite of India which was less glitzy. It was a bit unfortunate that we didnt have a tour guide, but Mike made up for that by having us follow a Chinese tour group, while he translated for me!

Next we headed down the street to Wat Pho. I'm not sure how many temple areas there are in Bangkok but i saw at least 50 on the map. Wat Pho was near to the Grand Palace Complex so we figured we'd give it a try. Inside the main temple there was an enormous (15m high - 45m long) gold Buddha laying on his side. Incredible.

We then hired a wooden long boat where the driver took us across the Chao Phraya river and into some of the smaller canals. All the houses were up on stilts and there were even floating gas stations and people selling things out of make shift canoes. There were a couple crocodiles too!

After that we took the public ferry (for a whopping 14 bahts - 50 cents) to the Khao San Market. There there was more knock off stuff, and a whole lot of useless junk. The funniest stall was a lady selling forged documents! She had passports, student cards, visas, drivers licences, and even diplomas! After the market we got into a taxi to head back to the hotel, but about 10 seconds after we got in, a cop pulled the driver over. I have no idea what he did, but we got out immediately and found another cab... The next cab didnt turn the meter on straight away, so i became worried that he would just charge us whatever he wanted when he got to the hotel. After scrambling through the guide book to find the word for meter, we yelled at him to turn it on. He then promplty drove right by our hotel by 3 blocks - pretty sure he did it on purpose.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Krabi where we will stay for 2 days.