May 29th: Buddhas in Bangkok

Had to wake up early (8am is early!) and I was extremely tired at first... until I enjoyed the shower. The shower head was amazing. The shower head was a rain machine. The water pressure was amazing as well. I hope I did not waste too much water! We had breakfast inside the hotel. It was delicious. I enjoyed miso soup, grilled salmon, dim sum, pork rolls, curry rolls, etc... and best of all I got to enjoy sushi for breakfast! I used to always joke that I could eat sushi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Fraser dragged me away from the food and we started our trek around Bangkok. Thankfully it was not raining. We walked about 4 hot hot miles (Bangkok is soooooo humid! You thought Virginia was bad? think again!) to the Wat Pho Palace. We walked around and enjoyed the beautiful architecture. Next we saw the Reclining Buddha. It was enormous, 120 feet long! Absolutely beautiful.

We took a taxi to the Jim Thompson House. Our taxi driver was very talkative and asked us lots of questions. He was really funny. He did not have a gray hair on his head. I would have guessed he was in his 50s. He started complaining about the taxes in Thailand and how expensive it has gotten, etc. He then said he wanted to retire soon because he was 79 years old!!!!! What?!?!?! Unbelievable.

We arrived to the Jim Thompson House and had to wait about 10 minutes for the tour to begin. Fraser started talking to another guy who looked our age. Turns out he went to college at UVA in Charlottesville, VA. I told him I went to JMU and his sister is still an undergraduate there. Small world. He was on a similar around the world trip and was on his way to Cambodia. We enjoyed the house and the shade (cooled us off a little bit). We toured the house for about 45 minutes and then caught the sky train to our hotel.
Bangkok is dirty, smokey, streets are crowded with taxis and scooters, terrible driving, and a handful of business men and prostitutes late night in our hotel. 95% of Thai women are gorgeous (other 5% are prostitutes = nasty!).
The temples & palaces are absolutely gorgeous once you arrive there. The walk there is smokey and noisy... in the future we will catch a taxi instead. Thai people are very friendly. On the occasion you will get scammed. Fraser had 5 different men approach him who ironically had just traveled to England for 3 months and knew where his hometown was. Rightttttt. As soon as that line started we knew they were trying to scam us and we politely (since they were being polite in a sneaky way) say we had to go and walk away fast. The first scam was weird but the others became annoying and made us feel uncomfortable.
We cooled off in the pool and enjoyed Tiger beer. As we were getting ready for dinner the rain started again. This time the hotel next to us disappeared. It was raining the hardest I'd ever seen in my entire life. Unfortunately the rain was so awful we had to eat inside the mall again. We enjoyed a Japanese restaurant. We shared a large sushi dish and enjoyed Asahi beer and Saki. The service was awful. At this point we realized we needed to wave servers down to make an order, reorder something, and to get your bill. As expected, service in every country is different. These girls were younger and did not want to come to the table even if you waved at them! We ordered green tea ice cream with red beans. The red beans were gross and the green tea ice cream was pretty nasty too. I mixed the 2 together and it was delicious. Amazing how 2 foods can interact. Delicious.