Thailand

Thailand: It was a 4 hour flight into Bangkok. We got there in the afternoon and we were unsure of what to do. After getting to our hotel we called a taxi company and had someone take us on a 5 hour tour. He first drove us to the main part of town and we took a long boat ride through part of the city. We saw more temples and a lot of slums built right over the water. We bought a wooden carved elephant from a peddler selling on a row boat that pulled up to our boat. Our tour guide drove us around the palace. Thailand has a king who has been reigning for 60 years. There are pictures of him everywhere. They seem to really love him. The palace was spectacular! He then dropped us off at the famous night market where we were able to bargain for designer handbags and sunglasses, etc. It was pretty fun. In my opinion one hour there was not enough… Everyone had told us how cheep Thailand was, but b/c the US dollar is so week now, it’s not as cheep as it use to be =( There were many other places we wanted to see in Thailand, like the floating markets, but we got there too late and everything was closed. If we had to do it over again I think we would have spent two days there instead of one. Oh Well. The next morning we boarded a small plane for Krabi, which is in the south. It was about an hour flight. Krabi is a beach resort town. Our hotel was about a 5 minute walk from the beach. Krabi is similar to Hawaii, just more lush. I feel like we were the only Americans there. I guess b/c we are so far away from Thailand. It was so nice to just be able to relax and soak-up the sun for a few days. We spend a lot of time lying on the beach and swimming in the warm water. One day we took a day trip to 4 different islands via a long boat. We snorkeled and had all sorts of fun! Another day we rented a scooter and explored. We found a hike to a Temple at the top of a cliff. It was 13,000 STEEP steps to the top, but we made it! It was an amazing view. There were signs every where about where to go if there was a Tsunami. The tsunami in 2004 just devastated this region. There were lots of monkeys there. If you fed them they would crawl on your lap. I keep trying to convince Steve that we should buy a monkey, but I don’t think it is working…