Bangkok

After leaving Bangkok for Iain's on Wednesday when we flew in, we turned around and came back on Thursday night in order to meet Iain and Jen's students for a field trip on Friday. We took a bus, about 3.5 hours, air conditioned and pretty comfortable.

We had to stop at several hostels before finding one with rooms available and that weren't directly opposite the toilets and/ or smelled of mold. We are right off Kao San road at a hostel called "My House". It is not what you would call luxury. There is no hot water and no electrical outlets, shared bathrooms, no sheets, and one towel. Believe it or not we are loving every minute of it. The place is filled with backpackers from all over the world, its amazing.

Thursday night we walked Kao San road which is famous for its vendors selling everything from watches to crickets. I got both. Katie and I went to a bar filled with farangs (foreigners) and drank Thai Rum by the bucket. Incidentally two bucket drinks is the same price as our hostel for a night, roughly $8.

Iain came by with a bag of fried crickets which after some coercion I tried one (Katie ate them happily along with several grub worms). The taste wasn't so bad, it was only when the leg got caught in my throat that I nearly gagged. Iain said I didn't chew enough. I think I will be sticking to eating rice.
Friday morning early we met up with the school children at the Kings temple, Wat Prakeow. Because the Kings sister died recently everyone was dressed in black. I specifically wore long shorts to my knees because I knew our knees had to be covered in addition to wearing all black. At the gate I was told I was dressed inappropriately. Katie gave me a black pashmina I wrapped around my waist as a skirt which worked perfectly although made me feel about eleventy billion degrees hotter.

The temple was amazing, we lined up with all of Iains students and waited to get in to pay our respects to the deceased sister. Everyone assumed Katie and I were teachers which worked out well because we were ushered in for free and got to participate in the memorial service. There were some famous Thai movie stars ( I couldn't tell you who) but the students absolutely freaked out when they passed us. Iain and Jen were interviewed by Thai Channel 3 News several times. We got a call from his friend in Chantaburi later in the day saying we were all on TV more than a few times! After the temple we headed with the students to the Suan Lum Bazaar in Pathumwan (still in Bangkok) and went to a traditional Thai puppet theatre. These puppets are famous and one of a kind. Three traditional Khon dancers hold each puppet in the air and dance and act out the stories, it was very cool. This particular story had a white monkey called Hanuman as its hero. At the end of the performance the dancers brought the puppets into the audience and played with the children who were absolutely having a ball. When they moved around to us the monkey snuggled up to Jen and kept kissing her, then all of a sudden he grabbed her purse and ran on stage while everyone roared. Jen was shy, but finally went on stage to retrieve her bag. They later asked all of the teachers on stage to take pictures, including Katie and I!
Your average traveller would not have been able to do the things we did yesterday, it was unbelievable and thanks to Iain and Jen we get to experience such things.

We are staying in Bangkok until Sunday and are trying now to get Visas to visit Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Its a very tall order and we only have 10 days to do it being that we want to spend the end of our trip relaxing on the beach at Koh-Chang.

Some interesting points:

-Thai people have trouble pronouncing my name, Katie comes out fine, like Kaydee. Mine comes out more like Crazzy, which Iain finds very amusing.

-Thai people use no toilet paper, there is usually a water hose for washing yourself. We still cannot figure out how they go about drying themselves. I imagine all Thai's just walk around with wet asses.
-Posted by Tracy