Bangkok: Day 1

Happy Thursday!

Our first real day of the trip. Bangkok is a crazy city. Kinda like Downtown LA mixed with New York City. Shops stores and people everywhere. Cats and dogs too. It is just packed.

For us today was full of scams. From one Tuk Tuk driver to the next and every one of them seemed to have a sister who married an American and now lives in San Fran or Seattle or Chicago. After we got that story a few times we realized we were in for it. Of course we fell for the “Buddist holiday” scam. Our plan was to go and see some temples today and since it was a Buddist holiday, we got into all of them for free. It wasn’t until we talked to some monks at the last temple did we find out that it was not a buddist holiday and the temples are always open. OH WELL! We got to see them all anyway and had quite an adventure along the way.

The four temples we saw today were the Lucky Buddah, the Old Buddha (this is where we met the guy whos sister lives in San Fran and they own a Thai restaurant called Phuket… anyone been there?), the Standing Buddah, and The Golden Mountain.






The Golden Mountain was our favorite. We had to walk up about 400 stairs to get to the top but the whole way up was full of waterfalls and greenery.
This is also where we met our new monk friends. They practiced their English on us and we got to find out some cool stuff about them. And of course get a picture.





We also donated some money for a golden bell that was placed on one of the smaller blessing temples beside the main buddah. We got to write on the bell for good luck. If you can’t guess what we wished for I will give you a hint…
GO GATORS. We definitely sent some good luck to the Gators for tomorrows game. The bell will ring in their name for years to come.










We ended the night with some delicious Pad Thai for dinner (which ran about $3 each) and then walked around the city for a bit. We came across a perfect street for Suzy. At 9pm we are already exhausted and ready for some good rest.