We have arrived

Let the adventures being. We arrived in Bangkok yesterday morning around 10 am after a long but relatively painless trip halfway across the world. We were feeling a bit sick from all the airplane food we had consumed but were excited to get the trip underway. Naturally when we arrived we had no idea what our plan was or where we were going so step one was to open our lonely planet book and figure out those minor details. We eventually got on a bus which brought us into the city to an area filled with hostels and guest houses. It was brutally hot and we were sweating profusely carrying all of our stuff so we made quick work of finding a place to stay. I actually managed to find the guest house that Ned and I stayed in when we were here before which was nice because it is in a good location and is fairly cheap (300 Baht a night for the two of us which is like $9). After we settled into our room we decided to walk around for a while and ended up finding a very nice little bar that satisfied our craving for a cold beverage...or two. Then the jet lag hit us hard so we retired back to our room to take what was intended to be a quick nap. We woke up three hours later and were both totally out of it but managed to motivate ourselves to get up and go get a bit to eat. It was just after 8 pm when we sat down at a street vendor for a bowl of noodles and by then we were beginning to come out of the daze we were both in. Towards the end of our meal a full on monsoon hit and we were forced to run for cover under the awning of a nearby restaurant. It poured like crazy for over two hours and by the time it was done the streets had turned into rivers making so cars or motorbike were no longer functional. We had a blast just sitting there and watching people try to walk around through the almost waist deep water. Once the rain let up we decided to give it a go for ourselves. We slowly waded our way back to our guest house only to find that it was also under about 3 feet of water! Luckily our room was on the 2nd floor so we were safe but many of the people staying there came back to find all of there belongings floating around there room. That would have been a major bummer for the start of our trip. Happy that all of our belongings were dry we retired to our beds and called it a night (after I beat up on will in a game of gin).

Today we woke up fairly early and went for breakfast (fried rice with pork). We spent most of the morning exploring the grand palace which is pretty breathtaking. It is another scorcher today so we took the afternoon off and found another establishment that could quench or thirst. We are planning to visit another temple this afternoon which is famous because it is home to the 40 meter reclining Buddha. Tomorrow one of my friends is flying in so we are going to go meet him at the airport and then try to catch a bus down to the south to spend a few days at the beaches. It is about a 12 hour bus ride so that will pretty much take care of our day tomorrow. As of now our tentative plan is to keep heading south towards Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, etc. over the next two months or so. However who really knows?..certainly not us. That is all for now.

-RBC