bangkoky

we had the most amazing day in Bangkok! we somehow planned our time to a t; since we checked in late the night before (sunday the 21st) and were flying out at 6pm on monday the 22nd. we woke up early, ate some breakfast at the hotel, and then tried to find our way to the grand palace. this is where we ran into some snafus; first we jumped into a tuk tuk, which is a bicycle/rickshaw, but then we decided to jump out at a light because the driver wanted to take us to some store in the northern part of town to look at some diamonds, which was not in our schedule. apparently the drivers get some type of commission or free gas if they bring customers to peruse. so we ended up walking basically all the way back to where we had just come from and kind of puttered around a mall and ate some popsicles. then we bought a map of the city, and it was on. except we couldn’t find the grand palace on the map and no one understood what we were saying.

we picked this other spot on the map that looked like it was worth seeing, and once we got there some nice german ladies told us how to get to the grand palace. except by that point it was SO HOT outside we were about to faint, so we just kind of zipped through and checked it off the list.


THEN we had to find a taxi driver that was willing to take us back to our hotel area; but since the traffic was so “bad” during this time (it ended up not being bad at all we didn’t see what all the fuss was about). anyway we totally lucked out and got mr. tai as our taxi driver, who drove us to his favorite restaurant where we had probably our best meal to date. it was a fresh fish restaurant that was unfortunately priced by the gram and we of course chose the biggest red snapper and squid on the ice. but soo worth it. it was so good i can’t even put it into words, so i’m not going to try to. we finished off the day with a foot massage and then flew to phuket, where we stayed one night at a very amicable hotel owned by a very friendly little thai guy named manit, he was super talkative and would say things like, “i bought these place mats from…somewhere. i can’t remember.” and jessy and i would say, “ohhh. very nice manit.” and he offered to pick us up from the ferry when we came back, but when we told him what day it was he said, “oh that’s my friend’s birthday. can’t come.” even though we came back at around 11am.

we took the ferry the next morning to ko phi phi island, where we stayed the next 3 nights.