Hello Thailand

We arrived in Bangkok, Thailand on Sunday morning at 930. Right on schedule. I was pleasantly surprised to see that everything was in both Thai and English making it fairly easy to navigate the city. Before going I was concerned about the language barrirer but I really didn't need to be. We haven't had any trouble talking to people here. We headed straight to the train station to check out the ticket situation for Chaing Mai. We weren't planning on staying in Bangkok at all because everyone we talked to said it wasn't really worth it.

The next available train with air conditioning wasn't until the night train, so we ended up with a day in Bangkok, since we all know I'm not going to ride a train for 12 hours with only a fan.

After a slightly traumatic bathroom experience (they have weird toilets here, and the public bathrooms do not come equipped with toilet paper it is BYOTP) we headed out on the town, and into our first tuk-tuk ride. I will say the first ride was terrifying but they got less scary as the day went on. We went down to the Grand Palace and walked around a little bit, got some Pad Thai and fresh coconuts for lunch and ended up by the water. After some confusion, we thought we were taking a boat tour and ended up just on a ferry to the other side of the river. After that disappointment, we got on an actual boat tour, through some canals. Right after we started the sky turned black and looked like it was going to monsoon. We were nervous. Thankfully our boat driver noticed it to and pulled up under a bridge with a bunch of other boats to wait out the rain. Luckily we managed to stay mostly dry, and Joseph made a friend with the Italian guy also on our boat.

After the boat ride our new friend took us to this sky scraper in the city where you can overlook the whole city which was pretty cool, and then we all went back to the train station where we bade our new friend adieu.

The overnight sleeper train was actually pretty cool. We each had our own bed, and you could lie down and relax. It took me a while to relax, and get over my stranger-danger anxiety, but once I felt confident no one was going to steal me or my things from the train, it was quite nice.

We got into Chiang Mai on Monday afternoon, the train was running a little slow which is fairly common during rainy season we've been told.

We went straight to the hotel to check in and take much needed showers. We no longer smelled very fresh.

We spent the afternoon relaxing and booked a day trip for the next day, and went to dinner. Where I accidentally ordered some very spicy dinner, so spicy in fact I was sweating profusely. The lady at the restaurant asked me if I was okay, and told me that she used spicy peppers, but that it was okay because they would make me healthy.

All in all, it was a really great start to the Thailand leg of our trip. I already love Thailand.