City of Blinding Wats

Bangkok, home to 10 million inhabitants, is one of those cities you either love or hate. Having stayed here for 6 days, we’ve seen most of the highlights, done a lot of walking, and are probably leaving at the right time. After a while,

all the sounds and smells assault your senses to such a degree that you either surrender to it or decide to move on.

 

First off, the Grand Palace is spectacular. We spent most of one day just wandering around this and neighboring Wats. Way too

many pictures to post! The first two nights we stayed outside the old town and were able to visit

some of the outlying attractions (and acquire our 30 day Laos visas) – Joe Louis Puppet Theatre, an amazing demonstration of puppetry, where three individuals control one puppet – not hidden behind a wall like a typical puppet show – but on stage. In this same area was a better than average night bazaar which had really nice handicrafts.

 

Another day we took a tour to Ayuttha, the ancient capital of Thailand. The

bus left at 6:30 AM, stopped at four other amazing Wats, before boarding us all on a boat for a four hour cruise on the river Chao Phraya back to our hotel.

We both enjoyed this tour very much (and we generally don’t do any tours at

all).

 

Another day was spent wandering the narrow alleys of Chinatown – everything is for sale here, somewhat overwhelming at times but that’s Bangkok.

 

We were also able to, unfortunately, catch the Super Bowl. It started at 6:00 AM Monday morning at a bar downtown. Marge was pretty bummed afterwards and

even an offer of shopping didn’t cheer her up.  My heart was

already broken a few weeks earlier when the Giants beat my Packers.

 

While in Bangkok, we were able to purchase a small laptop which we had seen in Singapore around Christmas, but were unable to get because of limited

inventory (the one place that

carried them only had 200). Here at the electronics mall we found one and snapped it up. It’s an Asus EEE, maybe 8 x 10 in size, very light, wireless compatible, 4GB hard drive, card reader, Windows XP, MS Office – really,

really slick and the best part is the price - $365. So, if it gets lost somewhere along the way, it’s not so painful. But check them out as they get introduced in America – perfect for traveling and I swear it just about slips into a pocket in my cargo shorts. Plus, we can now write blogs offline and then download later at internet cafes.

As it is, it takes about 3-4 hours to put together a blog and publish it to the web site. This includes

sifting through the pictures, downloading the pictures, captioning the pictures, composing story line, inserting pictures into text, and finally publishing. The most difficult part seems to be imbedding the pictures in the text, it's very tricky to get it right where the text flows around the pictures seamlessly, and of course I always try and get it

perfect..Then, of course, I’m always doing housekeeping chores like backing up our pictures on my

flash drive, deleting pictures we don’t need and so on. This is as much computer stuff I want in my life right now.

 

So, next stop, the charming border town of Nong Khai...