We are safe in Thailand! Our flights were super long and exhausting. We had a 5 hour layover in LA where I started my Gluten binge and have decided that gluten is not delicious enough for the pain. Our 12 hour flight to Beijing was good. Grant and I watched "the King's Speech" and "the Incredibles" and played games on the screen in front of us. It's usually at about the 9th hour that I start going crazy on flights. My knees swell and I feel claustrophobic and tired. We only had an hour layover in Beijing then we had another 6 hour flight to Bangkok. This flight we slept most of the time and my ankles swelled huge. When we got to the Bangkok airport it was about midnight. It's strange, Grant and I have both never been here and neither of us know the customs or the language, so we kind of stumbled into the street in some sort of doe-eyed daze. Some sleezy dude in a black and gold shirt with a rat-stache smoking a cigarette came up to us and said, "I pay hefty fee. 800 baht to khao san." (Khao San was the part of Bangkok we wanted to get to and 800 baht is about $25.) We thought that was a little expensive and diddn't really know what was up, then he said, "yes, I pay heft fee. 600 baht." I told him we'd do it for 300 but he just wandered away. Then this official lady came up to us and said, "you want taxi, you come here. That man mafia. No good." Ha! Sly dog. It only ended up being 450 baht to get to where we wanted to go, which is a corner of Bangkok full of hostels and close to the sites. I admit, my heart kind of sunk at first, because Bangkok at 2 am wasn't the most magical place in the world. Everything looks a million times dirtier and huge cockroaches wandered the sidewalks. But as soon as the sun rose, it looked much cleaner, livelier and beautiful, in a way. We stayed at this hostel that is pretty ghetto but only $7 a night for the both of us. It's just a box springs and mattress on the floor in a tiny room with a balcony. No AC, just a fan in the ceiling. But it's awesome. It was hot and sticky last night, and the sheets were definitely not clean since it had plenty of hair on it, but i vigilantly picked it off and we slept a few hours. Jet lag and the load traffic outside our window kept us from sleeping very late. We woke up at about 6 and took showers in the communal bathroom then had a piping hot bowl of beef rice noodles for breakfast. It was awesome.

Love, Coley and Grant