Succesfully Navigated

We successfully navigated Bangkok yesterday. Well not 100% succesfully. And we ended up going someplace copletely not intended. We had been shooting for a day trip out of Bangkok. We took the sky train out the subway to the main train station. Only to find out we needed to be at little bangkok's train station across the river.

So a quick look in the guide book and we decided to visit China town. it was quite an experience -- we did the walking tour recomended in the Lonely Planet. It was amazing! These super crowded streets with vendors of all shapes and sizes. Selling everything from local fish to tea to stuff that I didn't want to know what it was.

Then it was on a river boat over to little Bangkok where we never did find the train station -- but we did discover a little side alley that was worth exploring. We even ate local! We went into a little restaruant that looked like it had good food and the kind owner just had us sit down and brought us some food. It was super nums!

We followed that up with a river taxi back to the sky train and over to the "shopping area" part of Bangkok where they had the larger department stores. It was really interesting seeing how, for example, Robinsons was over here. Not a whole lot different unless you looked at things closely. Then there were all sorts of minor diferences.

A quick walk up a street full of merchants lead us back to the sky train and back to home.
Today we are headed out to Ayutthaya for a day or two. Then probably down to the floating market before returning to Bangkok on Sunday. Monday we leave for Nepal.

The guest house where we are staying is kinda out of the way -- but in many ways it's nicer that way. It might cost us a little more up front to get to and from the place -- but feeling safe and having it be a little quieter at night is well worth it. We're going to store our packs here while we are gone and then come back to this spot as our "base headquarters." This will make it very easy for us to store stuff which is one less headache that we will have to worry about.

Ok! Off to pack for Ayutthaya!