The longest thursday of my life.

We woke up about 4 a.m., yup 4 a.m. on thursday morning. We got all of our baggage together and checked out of the hotel. We got into the cab at 5 a.m. and headed to the airport to start our trip home.

Nothing really happened on our trip home other than the fact that neither of us slept. I was able to post a blog from the airport in Taipei, but other than that i couldn't concentrate long enough to get everything up to date.

While on the trip home VaRonica took a page from the Thai girls and wore here backpack on her front and called it her front-pack.

The flight from Taipei to LA was long, but the weirdest part was that our next flight from LA left before our flight from Taipei.

We were picked up in Salt Lake by VaRonicas parents at 7 p.m. From the time that we got into the taxi at 5 a.m. on thursday until VaRonicas parents picked us up in Salt Lake at 7 p.m., 32 hours had passed. Neither VaRonica nor i sleped the entire time, and before we started we had only four hours of sleep prior to. It was a very long day.

We decided to go to Mexican food because of all of the international foods that are available in Thailand, Mexican is not one of them. Both VaRonica and i noticed that we could not eat nearly as much as we normally do. I could only finish about a fourth of my food.

We then picked up my car and drove home. When we got home we met Ryan outside our apartment, he was running some things out to his car. When we walked into the apartment Sir jumped up and was excited to see us. We gave Ryan a few things that we picked up for him. Sir lost all of his energy when Ryan was leaving. he was all excited that we were home, but totally bummed that his play buddy who spoiled him was leaving.

So there was a lack of interesting pictures in this blog so here is one for the road...

Or two...

Big beautiful things

Today (wednesday) we woke up early to see the Royal Palace or as the locals call it Wat Prachaw. Our hotel flagged a cab for us and we started on our way. When we stopped at a red light the cab driver said that there was a lot of traffic, and it would be faster and cheeper to go south of the palace and catch the boat going north. He then mentioned about taking a tour of the river and we said no. So he parked in front of a pier and talked to the guy at the ticket counter. We got to the counter and the guy starts trying to sell us $30 boat tours of the water ways. We said we didn't want a tour just a water bus going north, and he said we don't do that here. I am getting a little sick of all the taxis and tuk tuks trying to take us to there sponsors. Every time a tourist buys something they get a percent, and every time they get someone to just walk in they get a fixed amount.

Fearing that we would turn his cab number into he hotel he then offered to take us to the water bus pier. We got on the boat and headed up to the pier were the Grand Palace was located. We walked the block through a little food market just off the pier over to a huge white wall and followed it to the main entrance.

Upon entering there is a large grass lawn to your left with the temples of the grand palace behind it, strait ahead was the ticket booth and behind that was some of the government buildings. We bought tickets and entered into the temple area.

The entrances to almost every major door has two giant demons called Yaks. They flank the door way to keep evil out of the temple area.

There are many types of guardians much like the Yaks all over the Grand Palace area. My favorite are the chinese style warriors.

All of the buildings were very colorful and bright. Most of them were closed due to cleaning and renovation. It is currently the off season, so it is the best time to do all of these things.

Luckily the main reason why we came was still on display. The Emerald Buddha, is only about two feet tall, but is made of solid emerald, and its clothing is gold en-jeweled with large carrot gems of all sorts. The Buddha has three different outfits, once for each season, and the only people allowed to touch the Emerald Buddha are male members of the royal family. For the past 60 yeast the clothing of this buddha has been changed by the current king. Unfortunately they do not allow pictures from inside the temple that the buddha is.

We then continued on the the area of the palace where all of the government buildings and the throne rooms are located. There were Royal Guard doing a little show and marching around the grounds with fully automatic machine guns.

After we left the Royal Palace we headed south walking trough another street full of people selling just about anything you can imagine. A block south of the Royal Temple is a very famous temple called Wat Pho. Two things make this temple famous. First, this is the location of a very large reclining Buddha.

This reclining buddha is long, if i were to make a guess it was at least eighty yards long, and probably thirty tall. It is really hard to show realistic size in pictures, but this thing is large. We tried to get a nice picture down by the feet looking up at the head, but tourist are very inconsiderate when it comes to personal space, taking a picture and moving on, and especially pausing and waiting for people who are taking pictures.

The second thing that makes this temple famous is the massage school that has been located on the grounds for about two hundred years. So of course we had to get another massage while here. I have to say i was a little disappointed, it wasn't the best one i received. But they only charged us for one person, so it wasn't all bad.

We then got lunch from a little food wagon just outside of the temple area. Several of the tourists leaving the temple were looking at us like we were crazy for eating at the street cart. After a good lunch we got into a tuk tuk and headed to our hotel to pack for the next day of travel. It took us several hours to pack up all of our little treasures. It was a very complicated game of Tetras.

We then got out and got some dinner at a restaurant just down the street from our hotel. We ate here once before and we called it the cat restaurant, because of all of the owners cats. There were probably eight of them.

After dinner we went and found a clean massage shop. VaRonica got a pedicure while i got a foot massage. Ouch! It was a good massage, but it did hurt. The lady used her knuckles, and a wooden dowel to push as hard as she could into my foot all over. It hurt but felt good. After those we decided to get a neck and head massage while we were at it.

We then went back to our hotel room and crawled into bed at about midnight.

Bling, bling... Ding, ding...

This morning (tuesday) we had planned to go to the Royal Palace and to visit Wat Pho. But we vetoed that idea when our alarm went off at seven in the morning. We decided instead to do that tomorrow, and change tomorrows plans to today. This meant that we got to sleep in.

At about eleven i called for a van to pick us up, and to take us to Thailand's largest gem store. The Gem Gallery is famous for its rare and beautiful stones that for the most part are mined here in Thailand. Mainly Thailand is famous for their Rubies, Sapphires and Emeralds

When we arrived at the huge gallery we were welcomed by a small group of employees. As well as an armed guard with a automatic rifle. We were ushered inside and here we met our guide for the gallery. Everyone who comes to the gallery gets a guide, to help them through the building and to keep an eye on them.

We were given some drinks, and ushered through some doors and into a work room. This room was large and had maybe twenty artisans cutting stones, creating settings, and any number of other things people need to do while making gems. We were shown the pre-cut gems as well as all of the processes and tools needed to get a final product.

We were then moved to the next room which was a lounge were we could order more drinks and hang out for a little while. But we moved directly into the next room which was the gallery. This was a very large room that had over 250 cases full of jewelry, and other expensive things. and in between the cases there were large salt water fish tanks with huge fish. The people inside were off all sorts and varieties as well, anywhere from a hippy backpacker just checking out what they had to the Indian women in saris with up to 10 diamond and ruby studded bracelets.

We were asked our likes and dislikes and then shown to specific cases where the jewelry we liked would be, no wasting of time here! We were shown things from the, "that's more than we will make in a life time" section to the, "wow we could afford that" section. It was fun and there was very little pressure from the guide to buy which made us even that much more excited to look. We didn't bring our camera with us so no photos, sorry.

After we were done there we went back to the hotel to freshen up and we headed out on the town to buy buy and buy some more souvenirs to bring home for not only ourselves but some of our peeps back home.

We got a quick bite to eat and caught a cab to the evenings entertainment. We had ring side tickets for that nights Muay Thai fight. There were twelve events scheduled for the evening. The fights started out with kids who were maybe 12 to 16 years of age and each fight built up for the next one. Heavier weight classes, more experience fights happened towards the end of the scheduled events. We had a blast watching the little kids kick the crap out of each other.

Right before the main event there was a demonstration of two fighters who dressed up in traditional Muay Thai "costumes", complete with rope tied around the fists. The main event was a little of a let down. Each fight had been better than the last, but when it came to the heavy weights (133 lbs) they were all about patience and technique rather than trying to beat up the other person. The fight was a little boring.

After the fights we headed over to where we had been told the night bazaar was. But it turns out we had some bad information by a few blocks. On our way to the correct area for the bazaar we saw a pile of monitor lizards all sleeping on top of each other, it was weird.

We then spent a few hours at the night bazaar buying yet more stuff to stuff into our bags to bring home. Including a fake Omega watch for myself, score. We then got a ride from a Tuk Tuk back to the hotel and called it a night.

The day I got scammed by an old Thai woman

Today, Monday July 5^th, we slept in a bit before heading out to our adventures. We decided to see the city as most of the residents do… by public transit. We took the sky train as far as we could, then realized that we went too far. We turned around and headed towards the river. We got on a boat bus and went up the river for a while.

We then turned around and got some food on our way to the Grand Palace. We ate at a little café where nothing was in English and the waiters all joked about Nathan’s accent when he spoke Thai. Some older women came into the café to eat, just because they wanted to see the foreigners eating “real Thai food”. We had a delicious lunch and then headed a little into the market there, I bought a high school girl uniform, that is very awesome! We then headed over to the Grand Palace, but it was closed! Hahaha We spent too much time playing around, so we took a tuk tuk around the area and saw a couple of other temples around in the area.

The driver spoke English and was talking to us, then randomly stopped at a couple of shops so that we could stop and buy things like jewelry and suits. We were a bit annoyed, but the drivers get sponsored by these shops and they get paid for how many people they drop off to look. We ended up in China Town and walked around there for a while, saw a Chinese temple and then one of the coolest Buddha’s ever, it is solid gold! It was roughly 8 ½ feet tall and has survived for over 1700 years. When the Burmese invaded Thailand, the tricky Thai’s encased the Buddha in clay and the Burmese left it alone. A long time after that the king asked that this clay Buddha that survived the invasion be moved to another city, it was then that there was an accident on the boat that was transporting it and the clay broke… they found that it was really a solid gold statue. It’s new home in Bangkok is lovely!

We then walked, walked and walked some more… we weren’t sure where we were going, but just wanted to walk and take in the new city. We ended up back at the sky train and when to Siam Square. This is where the riots happened about a month ago. We went into a mall and started to look around and decided that we would go to the food court and eat. This is when it happened… VaRonica got suckered by an old Thai woman! This cute little older woman came up to me and Nathan and said oh don’t eat the noodle soup here it is terrible! I said oh, ok. She said let me show you a restaurant that is much better. I tapped Nathan and he said ok lets go with her. We followed her and we chatted about Chiang Mai and where we had been, she asked what we were doing the remainder of our time here, I told her. She said Oh you need to see the Tiger Temple, it is so beautiful and new, there are live Tigers there that you can take pictures with it is the best! I will have a tuk tuk take you to a place so that you can get tickets, then to the restaurant. At this point I started to get skeptical, but all of the Thai women that I had met up until this point had been so kind and treated me like a long lost daughter, so we continued to follow her. She talked to the tuk tuk driver in Thai and told him where to take us, said her goodbyes and we were off. I knew then that we had been suckered, no I had been suckered! We were taken way out of the town and to a little tourist agency that tried to sell us a tour to the Tiger Temple which was about 2 hours out of Bangkok, we listened to them for about 5 minutes then got out of there. Then the driver took us another long way to this out of the way restaurant that was very expensive and full of live seafood for us to choose from, we declined dinner there too. We then asked the driver to just take us back to the sky train. I admit it, I was totally suckered into this 45 minute crazy wild tuk tuk ride around Bangkok by a cute little old Thai woman. Lesson Learned!

We then went back on the Sky Train to our hotel. We figured out what we were going to do for the next couple of days so that we don’t fall trap into another crazy scam and headed out for dinner. We ate at this little local café with super spicy food. This was the first time being here that I could feel my lips on fire and my nose started to run, I love spicy don’t get me wrong, it was delicious and dangerously hot!

We then had another one of the fabulous Thai massages and went back to the hotel for the night.

Great first full day in Bangkok, full of lessons and fun!

mortal combat, lizards, and souvenirs for the 4th of July

Today was a long day, on top of that it was the 4th of July. We woke up in Ayuthaya and began our days tour of town. Our first stop was at the countries tallest Chedii. If i remember correctly it was 64 meters tall. For those of you who don't know, a meter is eight inches short of a yard. So if you do the math in your head... that is one tall Chedii.

While we were there there was a group of Monks (men and women monks) doing a morning chant. Seeing Lady monks is fairly rare, the year that i spent in Thailand i only saw a small hand full. But on this trip we have seen several.

We hiked up into the Chedii were there is a well that goes into the Chedii. In the center of the well there is what the Thai people call the footprint of Buddha. People drop coins into the well and if the coin lands on the footprint they believe that they will have good luck. Our tour guide explained that several people believed that if there coin landed in the footprint that they would go and immediately buy a lotto ticket. My coin missed, but VaRonica got it dead in the center.

Then we walked around the observation area of the Chedii, about half way up. The view was great view of the city. Then we walked around the grounds and there was a reclining Buddha, this is VaRonicas favorite type of Buddha. People stick money on the bottom of the feet hopping they will make a lot of money.

Our next stop was to the ancient capital sight of Ayuthaya. This is no longer a functioning temple and no monks live in this area. It is now a national park of Thailand. A small few of you may have seen the movie Mortal Combat, well the beginning and end of this movie was filmed at this temple.

There is roughly half a square mile of ancient ruins, that we are encouraged to walk around. Burma sacked Ayuthaya about 700 years ago and destroyed all of the temples. They also knocked all of the heads off of the Buddha statues, at this time Burma was Hindu.

Next to the park there was a very large newer building. Inside the building there was a very large sitting Buddha. It sits in the center of the building, and lining the walls of this building are several heads of Buddha that were excavated from the temple area.

We then went to another temple that is a replica of the Anchor Wat in Cambodia. This is Cambodia's most famous temple. After Ayuthaya was back under the control of the Thai people, the king who spent some time in Cambodia decided to have the same temple built in Thailand. Several Thai people like this as one of there favorite temples. One of the princes of Thailand liked it so much that her Summer home is across the river from this temple.

There were two novice monks on a pilgrimage to this temple. Novice monks are under 20 years old, and are only monks for a few months. They are able to own some simple objects such as cameras and even some have cell phones (not sure they are suppose to). But they don't have any music, or books that aren't about religion.

The center of the temple is a large tower representing the center of the universe. Then there are four towers around that, each of them representing a continent. Then there are several towers around those that represent something else, followed by a wall that is lined with sitting Buddhas, all of which have had there heads removed.

We made one last stop at another ruined temple area that is famous for on thing in particular. The Brumes left the heads of the Buddhas laying on the ground where ever they fell. One head landed on the roots of a tree, and the tree has sense grown around it. Now the head sits inside of the tree about four feet off of the ground. We got several pictures, but i got in trouble for not kneeling in front of the Buddha. They don't want you to kneel to the Buddha, but when you are in the picture they want the Buddha to be above your head, so you are not above the Buddha.

Our last stop was to the Summer Palace. This was truly amazing, because this is the Palace that the current Royal family uses still to this day. One of the first things that we saw was the Island house of the King Rama 5. It was a very bright Thai style house that is a replica of where the house use to sit.

While we were in this area it began to rain very hard, so we hid under a gazebo and fed some fish and large turtles in the pond. Once the rain let up a little we headed over to the thrown building. Next to it was a building that had free clothing to wear in the thrown room. I put on some fisher pants to cover up my calfs, and VaRonica wore a silk sarong, we looked great.

The thrown building was designed in a European style, and the inside was truly amazing. Thick colorful carpets, bright chandlers, colorful paintings, and an amazing throne.

Another building that we went to was a Chinese building that the Chinese people built and shipped to Thailand in sections then reconstructed it where is stands today. Part of this building was open to tours, but most was not.

The last building that we went to was the observation building. It was basically a light house that King Rama 5 would climb and look over the country and relax. We got to go two thirds of the way to the top and took some pictures.

By this time the rain was beginning to stop. And we noticed some monitor lizards swimming in the ponds. I got a picture of one that was maybe about three feet long.

Then as we kept walking i saw another lizard that looked about six feet long. I believe that it was a crocodile, but i am not sure anyone believed me. What do you think?

We then drove into Bangkok and checked into our hotel. Our Hotel is about two blocks away from the sky train. We took the sky train to the weekend market and bought lots of stuff to bring home.

monkey, monkey, monkey

So today was suppose to be VaRonicas turn to write a post for our blog, but as we were sitting in the restaurant the Germany Argentina World Cup game came on. And well... If VaRonica has any emotional investment in a sport on TV, it is impossible to get her to not watch it. She played soccer in high school, and wants Germany the under dog to win.

But luckily for me it was a fairly simple day so this blog won't be too long. We woke up this morning and had a slow start. We were suppose to leave the hotel at eight in the morning, but we didn't get to the restaurant until about 7:45. Out tour guide was there finishing his breakfast, and he said not to worry about eating fast we can leave at 8:30. So we ate our breakfast and then headed on down the road.

Our first stop was to look at a large gold Buddha in a city that i can't spell for you (it is long and hard). Here we had the opportunity to donate a little to the monks that lived at this temple. For a set amount of money, you can buy a prepackaged gift box for the monks. Included is hygiene kits, food, and clothing. We bought one and gave it to a monk. The monk then blessed us, and gave us a holy water sprinkling. He then chanted and concentrated some water as we poured it into a bowl to make more holy water. After he gave us bracelets that are simple white thread that is knotted a few times, and also blessed. It is said that the bracelets will bring us good luck.

After a few hours down the road we stopped for lunch. Our tour guide wanted to stop at a restaurant that he eats at often. The reason he eats there so often is because the daughter of the owner is really pretty. So we stopped at the restaurant and we ordered our food, and VaRonica asked our guide which girl it was that he liked. Well it turns out that she wasn't even there today.

We drove for another hour and entered the city of Lopburri. Lopburri is famous for one thing, monkey city. In the center of the city there is a large Cambodian temple built when the Cambodians ruled the area. Some time several centuries ago the moneys came down out of the mountains, and no one is really sure why. But now the moneys live on this temple, and through out the city.

There are two different groups of monkeys. The first is the group that lives around the temple, the second lives in the city. The two groups are always fighting over territory.

When we got out of the van, a young boy walked up and volunteered his services to protect us from the monkeys. He carried a sling shot that he would snap to send the monkeys running. He never actually shot anything, but the monkeys were weary of him.

Out side of the temple there was a little old lady selling food to give to the monkeys. We got a bag of corn on the cob that had been broken into smaller pieces. We entered the temple grounds and walked around the temple, all the time giving the monkeys the corn.

At one point i had several monkeys crawling all over me. One tried to grab my sunglasses, but i kept control of them. Another was trying to get into my pockets, sneaky little buggers. At another point there was a battle to see who could control the space on my back. There were maybe six monkeys fighting over who could sit on my back. It was quite entertaining.

Then we had the opportunity to go inside this temple, there were three chambers inside. Each represented a different teaching of Buddha, compassion, wisdom, and love. Most of the temple is still in its original state from when it was built about 700 years ago. It was also filled with bats.

We then walked across the street from that temple and entered a Hindu temple. Just as we were going inside it began to rain. And boy did it rain hard. While in this temple we learned a little about the Hindu religion. We then got our fortune done. There is a cup of bamboo sticks in almost every temple. Each stick has a number, you shake the cup side ways until one stick falls out. The you go to the drawer that has that same number, open it and take out a piece of paper. On this paper is our fortune. VaRonica and i both did it, and we both got the same number. Our fortune basically said that we had to be patient. Nothing bad or good will be coming our way for a little bit.

We then drove to our hotel and got checked in. We walked to the train station looking for an international ATM. We didn't find one, but what we did find were several groups of Europeans that were backpacking across the country. They all needed a good bath. We got dinner at a restaurant and started watching the world cup game, and then headed up to our room for the night.

Temples and Buddhas and Chediis, oh my!

I was so excited this morning, we were all geared up for a tour of Chiang Mai. We checked out of our hotel, and got some breakfast. After breakfast we met with our tour guide and we realized that we had read our itinerary wrong, and that if we wanted a tour of Chiang Mai we had to set it up ourselves the night before. Bummer, but life goes on.

We drove for a few hours and entered the city of Lumpang. Here our tour guide who's name is Sam, took us to an old temple that has a lot of history. The temple was very beautiful, as well as the Chedii which stood behind it.

A very long time ago the area was under the military rule of Burma. A Siam man snuck into the temple in the night and shot the Burmese general. The bullet exited the general and hit the temple gate. This Siamese man became the king of the area after the Burmese were beat back. This man came back to the temple to make up for damaging the temple gate, and this is when he became the king. It's hard to see, but the bullet hole is the middle rung between the pink pieces of cloth.

Another thing that this temple is famous for is the shadow of the Chedii. The shadow of this Chedii enters into the adjacent buildings and isn't the usual black. The entire Chedii can be seen in the shadow, including the golden color of the bronze that surrounds it.

Both VaRonica and i were able to see the main tourist area of the shadow. But there is a second building that women are not allowed to go into, but the tour guide took me in and showed me the larger shadow. It truly was amazing to see. It is upside down, but you can see the yellow cloth wrap about half way up, and the gold part at the top.

We then drove to Sukhothai, an ancient capital of Siam. Sukhothai is often regarded as the first capital of Thailand. The king of ancient Sukhothai invented the first non-Bali written language of south east Asia. The current Thai, Laotian, Burmese, and Cambodian languages all have heavy influence from this language.

This king also brought Buddhism from Nepal to south east Asia, opened trade with the son of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan. And also had important trade agreements with Malaysia, Cambodia, and the Lanna nation (now northern Thailand). All of these different countries influenced the construction of this old city.

After touring the many temples with in the old city, we ventured out a short distance away to where there was a very large sitting Buddha. The fingers of this Buddha were about six feet tall, it was a really big statue.

We then drove to our hotel, checked in, and relaxed for a little bit. Then we walked down our street a little ways to a small little restaurant. We ordered some food from this really nice old couple. The wife cooked the food, while the old man ran the tables. After we ate we got a picture. After taking the picture a little kitten jumped on the rafter just above my head. It was hunting for Jink Jokes, little gecko's, but it made me jump. And the older couple just laughed. It was funny.