Updated Bangkok Blog!!

Hello All,

We have made it safely to Bangkok, Thailand. After arriving at the airport we took the bus into Bangkok and to our Guest House. The place is pretty nice. One step up from the Hong Kong hostel.

Anyways we didnt do much last night, but walked around Khao San Road which is full of tanned tourists and vendors. We had dinner with two beers for 10$ Canadian!

It is very hot here so we are getting an early start to the Grand Palace and a couple of temples...

Talk to you all later!

Ryan and Sarah

Hello... we are doing a quick update because we have extra time at an internet cafe after trying to book travel plans... it has been a long and interesting day! This morning we saw the Grand Palace, Wat Arun, and the giant reclining Buddha. We gave some English lessons along the way to some nice Thai kids and then headed back to have lunch, we were a bit more adventurous this time and it was good! After lunch we wandered around and did a bit of shopping and then it was time to make travel arrangements to go down to southern Thailand tomorrow. This was/is a lot more difficult than we had anticipated! The flights are a lot more expensive than we'd thought and the ones for today and tomorrow are sold out or at inconvenient times. And then began our troubles getting mixed up with Tuk Tuk drivers trying to scam us... it's a long story, but Ryan will try:

We decided to head to the train station to book tickets to go down to Surat Thani before transferring over to Krabi and Thai islands. So we waved down a tuk tuk and he quotes us 20baht (less than 1$) to take us to a bunch of tourist destinations, the TAT ("government" travel authority), and then MBK (the large mall). After taking us to the touristy destinations and then the TAT (which we refused to purchase any arrangements from) he stopped and asked for us to go to some shopping Expo for ten minutes we refused and he didnt budge so we got off the Tuk Tuk without paying him a dime. Then we waved down a taxi and much later arrived at MBK mall... luckily the Tuk Tuk got no money from us and we got some free destinations...

Anyway we went to MBK, it was very big but nothing that exciting. So now are are planning to walk to the train station and buy our overnight ticket in a sleeper car for tomorrow night to Southern Thailand. We were also considering an overnight bus but apparently they pretend to "break down" halfway through in the middle of the night and demand more money from you to "fix" the bus. That doesn't sound so appealing, so anyway we are off to the train station and if that doesn't work, we will end up booking a flight for either tomorrow or the next day.

Ok we have 5 min left here... we like the area we are staying in although it is very touristy, feels like right out of a movie. The city is huge and it is a bit difficult to get oriented. It is harder to communicate with people than in Hong Kong, and the public transportation does not seem to be very helpful. We are trying to learn a bit of Thai and have managed to offend a few people with our ignorance.

Ok, time to go to the train station! We write (hopefully) from southern thailand next!!!!