Bangkok, Thailand & Surrounding Areas III

No avoiding it, I am one smelly American. All day, every day whether the sun is out or not, it is hot here. I am always sweating. No matter how much deodorant I wear or water I drink I get hot, sweat, and then stink. Everytime I go to my room, I try and take a shower just because it is always so hot. When I initially got my room and found out that they didnt have hot water I was pretty disappointed, but I have come to realize you dont need it.

The past few days I have been mostly just seeing the sights. Two days, ago I went on my Floating Market day tour. Yesterday, I go to see some cool temples and do some suit shopping. Today, I got to see some more temples and see the Grand Palace. All have been interesting.

The first day, I got to see the Floating Market. They sell everything you never knew you needed. But it was still pretty neat to see some of the boats they had. All of the boats are made of wood, but that doesnt stop some of the woman from putting huge stone cooking pots in the middle and grilling food on them. Its pretty impressive. Later on, I got to see a Monkey show, Crocodile Show and Elephant show. The Monkey show was pretty hokey. If I had twelve monkeys, a miniture motorcycle, and a set of bleechers in my backyard I am pretty sure I could put on the same show. But the Elephant show was really impressive they had about ten elephants play soccer at one point and had a mockey battle where they stormed a fortress. It was pretty cool. The crocodile was pretty interesting too. The show was basically two guys in a concrete pen with 5 crocs in it. The concrete was pretty wet and the guys involved fell unitentionally at least 5 times which added an extra bit of suspense to it. They did the whole putting their head in the crocs mouth thing which is impressive. Because if watching Max-X has taught me anything, its that anything and everything can go wrong in animal shows in the developing world.

That day was all good fun except I had to wake up at 7 am to start the tour but lunch wasnt till 1pm. So there was a period of about 6 hours where I didnt have anything to eat. This would be a problem even if I was in the US, let alone in Thailand where the portions are already too small to begin with (I've already had to add 2 extra meals to my day just to maintain my weight). Anyway, by the time lunch came I was starved. We are taken to a buffet near the elephant show. These poor people didnt see me coming. I went to town on this thing. Double everything. The more meat the better. But this combination of gorging myself and not having had a BM for the first 3 days in Thailand created the perfect storm . . . . . I have no idea what it was or why it was in such a hurry but something comes out of me about the size of a young child's torso. It was awful. Thank goodness they had toilet paper at this place. But I mad one critical mistake I forget to put my toilet paper in the waste basket instead of the toilet. You arent suppose to put the paper in the toilet or else it will clog the toilet. I had no idea how this thing was going to end up. So I just pull the plunger on the toilet like Im pulling the pin on a hand grenade and get the hell out of there.
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Everyone in Thailand is very friendly. Yesterday, on the street a random Thai man introduced himself to me and ended up talking with me for about 20 minutes. He lets me know about a cool temple that not a lot of tourists go to, the Temple with the Black Buddha, and a good place to get a suit, Nakhon Sawan Factory. When I got to the temple I met another random Thai man who had learned to speak English by watching American Movies. He was pretty interesting. It was Buddhist Day and he briefly showed me how/where to pray in the temple there. When you enter the temple you have to remove your shoes and are suppose to sit on the ground. The way you are suppose to sit is as if you were kneeling and then feel to one side so your feet are behind you. This is because you aren't suppose to point your feet at the Buddha. Feet are considered the dirtiest part of your body. He was an interesting guy, we shared about where he had been and where I was headed, then we went on our way.

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Today, I just do more tourist stuff. I went to the National Museum first. When I went in there must have been a field trip of some kind going on because there were kids in uniform everywhere. As I walk through the museum I can hear the kids coming up behind me and laughing. I see a lot of flashes going off, too. When I turn around the kids that are pointing their cameras at me pretend to be looking at something else. It was pretty funny. Two girls eventually came up to me and asked if they could take a picture with me. I ended up giving an interview to another group for a school projects. Basically, whats my name? Where Im from? Why Im in Thailand? And do I like it here? I ended up doing something similar with a bunch of sixteen year old military school kids. It was fun experience. Later on, I ended up going to the Grand Palace Later too which was very impressive. It is a huge compound in the middle of the city. I also got to see the Golden Mountain too. All in all it was a pretty productive day.

Tonight, I meet up with Laurence again and we will head North tomorrow morning. We are going to be headed to Lampang for a two day Elephant Riding Expedition. Im pretty pumped about it.