July 5, 2006

Hello all,

Well, we have been in Bangkok for three days now. It is very hot and humid, but we find fans and a\c periodically to get a flash of cool air. We are still trying to get over our jetlag. We tend to crash around 6 o'clock every evening. Is that our tiredness from the flight or the heat we can't figure out yet, but I guess we will as time goes on.

Bangkok is full of people and cars. There is more traffic here than I have ever seen, including New York city. Cars are lined up from the am to the pm trying to get to places. Somewhere you would think you could go in about 15-20 minutes takes about 40-60. Cabs are cheap, luckily, so it only costs a few dollars or less to get from point A to point B. We have been to many Wats here in Bangkok. Wats are Buddhist temples. There are so many of them that it is hard to keep track of the names. We are taking lots of pictures, but not sure if we'll remember the names as we are scrapbooking (or should I say as I (leslie) am scrapbooking.

Today we went up to Ayutthaya by bus. This is a small town (200,000 people) north of Bangkok with more Wats to see. We also saw an (h)elephant farm that was quite impressive. I sat close to one for a posed photograph. Very spikey hair. We then visited more wats and palaces. After the wat visits, we made our way to a pier where we took a river cruise back to Bangkok. We had a buffet lunch of different foods and fruits, drank coffee and looked at the various dwellings of Thai people. It's amazing some of the homes both very ritzy looking and others very run down looking. Again we saw more wats on the river.


This afternoon we saw our first big rain storm from our hotel room. It rained and rained and rained. Tomorrow we are headed up north to Sukothai to do some more exploring. Be looking for more postings. We will continue to update. Wish we had photos to upload, but haven't figured that out yet.

Love to you all,
Leslie and Robert