Our first real day in Bangkok we were walking around scratching our heads and gawking at a map and looked like quite the tourists. A tuk tuk (rickshaw) driver came up to us and BEGGED that we take his tuk tuk around to a couple buddha sites for only about 75 cents. We finally relented, which I still have mixed feelings about whether or not it was a good idea. Basically he paced impatiently at the sites he took us to while we took pictures, then took us to a couple of travel agencies and a suit shop so he could get some perk or whatever. Very annoying, especially since Grant and I got snookered into buying over-priced tickets to various destinations around Thailand. As we have slowly figured out, we could have saved a bit by just going to the train station and doing it ourselves. It's okay though...it's been a little while since we both traveled and there's always that first day or so of getting your feet wet so getting a little ripped off at first is natural. Later that day we went to the National Museum and took a ferry down the river downtown but realized all the public transport was closing in an hour so we just went home again. ha. It was fun ride through Chinatown Bangkok on a bus with our heads hanging out of the windows and our tongues out like dogs. The next morning we ate a hot dog in honor of the 4th of July (a day late, but that's okay) by the river and had some sicky yogurt shakes that were probably totally full of parasites. Then we took a bus to Kanchanaburi!

            Well, the general appeal of Kanchanaburi were the waterfalls, tigers, elephants and monkeys. We stayed at a pretty nice place there that was booked by the travel agency. We rented a couple bikes and visited the strangest museum. It had super creepy paper machet like mannequins portraying WWII scenes. So Kanchanaburi is actually the location of the "Bridge Over the River Kwai" which I knew absolutely nothing about until this vague museum. Apparently, the Japanese ravaged SE Asia and built this huge railway and bridge over the river using 60,000+ Allied POWs. Then the Americans came to bomb the bridge so the Japanese put a ton of POWs on the bridge to try to deter them from doing it. But (in the words of the museum plaque) "Alas! the bombs were dropped and bodies rank, laying higgledy piggledy in the river." Hard not to laugh, even though it was sad...

Then we biked over the bridge and biked through back roads and villages, which was awesome. In the town, there was a man charging a few bucks to take a picture with a baby leopard, so I got to feed and play with an adorable leopard for a couple minutes. 

          The first couple days in Thailand I was feeling some extreme stress and was very overwhelmed. I felt crazy with some sort of culture shock and it made it kind of hard to function at times. Culture shock sure is interesting. Fortunately, that faded and I'm feeling more adjusted. Grant was very patient with my stick-in-the mudness. 

The next day we rented a motor scooter and went out to the popular sites around. The goal was to avoid spending hundreds of Thai "baht" on planned tours. Some of the sites included a Tiger training school, Elephant riding, and beautiful waterfalls. But in the end, we spent a ton on gas, turned down the Tiger Temple and elephants because they were lame and expensive and didn't make it to the waterfall before it started pouring rain. We had to shiver under at a noodle stand until it let up. It was kind of funny because we already looked like wet rats coming in from the rain but we slid and fell in the mud too. Grant was a little frustrated that although it was cool to cruise through and get lost in a Thai jungle, we didn't end up doing anything we wanted to. Kanchanaburi was a little bit of a bust in the end, but it was still interesting in its own way. 

          The next day we at least were able to see a Buddhist temple (the life of a monk must be totally boring...they were all just sitting around chopping up wax candles and listening to ipods) and cave (full of bats, dive bombing at our heads). We also so a big WWII cemetary which was really neat. It was an English and Dutch POW camp cemetery and it was pretty beautiful and kept up. All the soldiers were pretty young, so it was a sobering event. We tried to go to another "Wat" or temple, but got lost and got some funny directions from a couple at an agricultural college. We just ended up getting lost and losing the strap to my bag. (Yes, we get lost and we are still alive.) 

            That day we returned to Bangkok where we had a couple hours of "layover" until another bus would take us to southern Thailand. In that time we saw a crowd was heading to the river and our bus driver told us that the King of Thailand was passing by on a boat! So we got in with the crowd and a man gave us a couple flags of Thailand and the King's special flag. A nice couple taught us how to say "Song Pha Chaloon" or something like that, meaning "long live the king". We were caught up in the excitement of the crowd but Grant was a little disappointed that the king passed by on a mammoth yacht instead of the golden boat with dozens of oars that he was imagining. Definitely not the same as Anna and the King. 

           We then had one of the longest nights of my life. We were picked up by a bus at 6 pm in Bangkok which was full of backpackers like ourselves. Thailand, by the way, is FULL of backpackers. Tourism is the country's #1 industry and it seems as if everywhere you turn there is an organized tour and a hippy-like restaurant. Anyway, so we took the bus for 6 hours with little sleep then stopped for half an hour at a dingy expensive restauranty thing where pringles were $10 a can. Then we went on for another 3 hours until we reached our port. The bus basically dumped off about 60 backpackers in a tiny, deserted boat station and said our boat wasn't coming for another 3 and a half hours. So everyone sat around smoking, drinking and mingling. Grant and I ended up chatting with a nice English kid named Callum the whole time. It's funny, I told him that it was my dream to ride a double-decker bus in London, but it was his to "drive on a long, straight, flat highway--like the ones from the movies". How boring. Haha. Since then we've heard other Englanders second that dream. Weird. Grant gave Callum his Book of Mormon. He's such a great missionary! The boat finally picked us up at 6am. The boat was LOUD and smelled like gas so I got pretty queasy. But finally we got to our island, Koh Pha-ngan. Since then, it has been a dream! We took a taxi to a tiny little beach on a nook of the island and stayed at a private "bungalow" for $13 a night. We swam, sunned ourselves, read, slept on hammocks, ate pineapple and just lazed. It was good after that long bus ride.  We stayed there for 2 nights. It was like paradise and a second honeymoon.

Today we moved to another part of the island, which is also fairly quiet. A lot of backpackers go to another part of the island for some boozefest party which leaves where we are pretty peaceful. Today we ate lunch while watching a lady lay our hundreds of little squid on dozens of screens on the beach to dry. Then rented another motor scooter where we met and accompanied a nice Spanish girl to a couple waterfalls (which are just trickles of water, unfortunately...must be a dry summer). On our ride through this jungle-y area we saw a few elephants on the side of the road and got a great deal on an elephant ride! Our elephant was 49 years old and HUGE. His trunk was maimed from some sort of accident so the end of it was kind of blubby. Grant got on first, by holding the elephant's eyebrow bone thingers and walking up the trunk. He sat on the elephant's neck. Then I climbed up the same way but sat on the elephant's head with my feet dangling between his eyes. So unbelievable! His skin was so leathery and thick and the black hairs on his head were about 4 inches long and super bristly. The Thai guide lead us around for 20 or so minutes through this jungle-y path, taking pictures all the while. At one point he started eating a bunch of bamboo and Grant and I were getting stabbed by all the shards above his head. IT was so cool to kind of see through the eyes of an elephant in a way. He walked SO slow. Afterwards we slid down his trunk and fed his bananas (by basically sticking our hands in his mouth which was soggy and gummy). Then we were allowed to hold and take pictures of this little rascal of a 7 month old monkey. When he saw Grant he went crazy and was attacking him and jumping all over the place. When it was my turn to hold him, he LOVED my head. He snuggled into my hair and started picking at it, looking for bugs just as you'd think they would do. It didn't ever want to leave. Then I held it a little like a baby. When I tried to finally put it down it went CRAZY clinging to my neck then jumped down my shirt then through my sleeve. He was chained up, so I could only get him out of my sleeve but he was crawling all over my in my shirt. Finally I had to yank the chain and pull him out of my sleeve. I was sad to part with him. He was super adorable. 

             Afterwards we scootered over to the western side of the island to see the sunset. Our swimming suits were under our clothes so we took a dip in the water which was WARM and only a couple feet deep even pretty far out into the water. We watched the sun set which was pretty but had to skeedaddle because I storm came blustering in.

          Some other side comments/stories:

Strange Oddities: Homosexuality is rampant. There are a breed of trans-sexual men called "ladyboys". Prostitution is also huge. Many of the women are either sex slaves or were forced into the business by desperate situations. We often see sleazy middle-aged white men with Thai women. It's so gross. Apparently another part of Thailand has child sex slaves. 

            They drive on the opposite side of the road! Which can get confusing when riding a scooter.

Strange Creatures:

         Hog: We were wandering up a hillside looking for the entrance to a restaurant when we found a really big hog in our path.  

         Komodo Dragon: Grant and I climbed some big rocks by the beach looking for a place to jump off and bumped into the biggest lizard you have ever seen! It was basically a FAT Johanna. It slithered out of our path, flicking his black tongue as he went.

         Rat: We saw and heard a large rat nibbling a coconut high up in a palm tree.

         Spider: So I was brushing my teeth in our bungalow when out of the corner of my eye, I see Shelob on our bathroom wall! This spider was HUGE. The body was a bit smaller than a tirantula's but its legs were twice as long. It was about the size of my hand. It was yellow with a red head and was hairy with terrifying mouth pincher thingers. And it was fast! I ran screaming out of the bathroom and saw it run the same direction toward the door at about 60 mph. I jumped on the bed and the spider stopped at the bathroom doorway and Grant just said, "Oh my word, that's a BIG spider." We debated somehow shooing it out the door, but we were afraid it would run into our luggage or find its way back in. So Grant heroically went for the squishing method, which wasn't a good thought. He tried a shoe, but didn't feel comfortable getting that close to it. Surprisingly, a good whack with a broom was all it took and it splatted on the floor. He flushed the carcass down the toilet and I haven't had a good night's sleep since. I sleep with one eye open and have raging spider nightmares all night. 

         Geckos: These little lizards also run around our hostel room, but since the spider incident, they are welcome guests. 

Food: 

          It's ALL delicious. No complaints. All spicy, saucy, and yummy. It just gives us the runs, that's all.