Bangkok- Third Time's A Charm

The four of us: Eric, Adam and Alex, and I piled onto yet another airplane bound for Bangkok. Upon arrival we said farewell to our travel companions as Eric and I headed into the city for a third time. Sadly our cab driver didn't understand my request for Elvis. The hostel (Udee's) I booked was amazing. It was brand new, cost ten dollars a night, was spotless, had large bunk beds and a great staff. This was probably our nicest accomodation (besides the Mariott Adam treated us to), thusfar.

We spent the day getting aquainted with the sprawling city. It felt like a spring day outside so walking around the city was great. We planned for our Saturday night in Bangkok to be spent bar hopping, but all was changed when we found Thang Le Street. Eric found a bar that served Hoeegarden and Chimay so we sipped on our two favorite (yet very expensive) exports and continued our way down the street. The next find caused all former party plans to be shattered... Tom's grocery store. I don't know who this Tom fellow is but he made my day. We hadn't seen any form of a grocery store since Greece so we both became really excited. We stocked up on the good stuff, doritos, cheezits, Oreos (double-stuffed of course) and gum then happily got a cab home to our delightful hostel with our Saturday night complete.

The following day we toured the city, visiting wats and other important sites before stumbling upon best thing since doritos... A movie theater with New Moon playing in English. After lots of convincing and bribing Eric and I settled into the most amazing movie theater seats I've seen. As we were watching the previews somethig strange happened. The entire movie theater stood up. We were beyong confused and then realized there was a commercial praising the king being played. By far the weirdest event we'd seen. Giggling, we joined in the strange event hoping no one had noticed our extreme confusion and lack of respect.

Reclining Buddah at Wat Pho.

Donation buckets at Wat Pho.

Tuesday Eric and I decided to test out our navigation skills and began our journey to the floating market (a few hour trip usually scheduled through a travel agency). We arrived at the market and hopped into our long tail boat eager to explore the market. The driver cruised around the tiny water ways occasionally stopping to let us shop and buy fresh fruit. After the market we set off on adventure #2, Kanchanaburi town. This was a bit more tricky. The town is located east of Bangkok near Burma. After lots of hand signals and trying to interpret Thai we found our way to an open air public bus, regular bus and finally the bus stop to Kanchanaburi. The town was quaint and is nestled in the mountains near waterfalls and other national parks. We explored the bridge over the River Kwai, the start of the infamous World War II Death Railway to Burma (Myanmar), and then dined at the best pizza place we've found in two months.

Hide and seek at the floating market.

Hey fruity!

Checking out the bridge.

A view from the terrace at our hotel.

Wednesday morning was spend lazily reading by the river on our hotel's porch and strolling around town. For the afternoon we headed to the Tiger Temple. This is a tiger reserve and temple that houses dozens of tigers, leopards, peacocks, and deer.
The real treat is being able to get up close and personal with these enormous cats.

Thats a big kitty.

When they said we would see the feeding of a baby tiger...we were not expecting this 400LB cat.

After our rendezvous with the tigers we got on another bus back to Bangkok. The last day and a half in Bangkok was spent primarily at Siem Square ( Phipps mall on steroids ) where we took part in another "praying to the king" experience while watching 2012(my punishment for making Eric see New Moon). We also went bowling there to pass our time before heading to the airport.

From Bangkok we are heading to Beijing for Thansgiving and then meeting my friend Jason in Tokyo on December 1. We are excited for a change of pace, culture and weather (for a few weeks) before returning to our endless summer in the Philippines, Bali, and Australia.