Wow what a day in Bangkok yesterday. The day started off early since we went to sleep at 6:30pm the night before. We had breakfast at the hotel and then walked down to the mega-mall where the subway station is.
Bangkok's public transportation is actually really nice and very easy to figure out. The only bump we really had is when Steve left me standing on the platform, jumping into the train as the doors were closing, leaving me staring at him through the glass with the "WTF!?!" look on my face. Thankfully though, he was able to screen "wait here!!" before the train pulled away so we didn't have to spend the rest of the morning figuring out how to find each other. It was actually really funny. The stations are really safe, clean and cool and I ended up meeting a New Zealand woman who traveled to Thailand to get work done (apparently that stuff is much cheeper here. She was getting 8 dental crowns and laser on her face and legs-it was a very odd conversation).
Anyway, like Steve said, lots of Wat visiting yesterday. We met a Thai man who set us up with an itinerary for the day and then grabbed a tuk-tuk driver and negotiated a price for the whole thing. We had our own on-call driver for 100baht (which is like $4). Granted the tuk-tuk driver was an ass and drove us to all these "expo shops" where he could get free gas for bringing us there, but we agreed to it cause we were killing time and exploring Bangkok. Anyway, we traveled to so many beautiful temples and we'll post pictures as soon as possible.
Right before we traveled back to the hotel we had our first unfortunate experience though. We got scammed. Not terribly. But enough to piss us off and teach us our lesson. We went to a travel agency that we were told was part of the TAT (transportation authority of Thailand) and paid too much to book our Trek in Chang Mai. I won't get into it too much more than that. There's a little more to it but we're still kind of reeling about it and trying to take it as a learning lesson and let it go. We now know Thai people are very friendly, but there are also some, just like Americans, that our blatantly full of ca-ca.
Anyway, we didn't figure out the scam until this morning so let me finish with yesterday. We got back to the hotel, showered the sweat off (Thailand is HOT!), rested, then went to a Lady Boy show!! It was hysterical. And completely bizarre. I got some good pics from that too.
So now we're packing up, working on our remanding travel arrangements for the south and then flying to Chang Mai. I'm looking forward to being out of Bangkok. It's kinda like a city on crack. Its beautiful and hideous at the same time. Small doses is good.
Till next time.
-Gina
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