Bangkok

We made it to Thailand! We arrived at about 2am in Bangkok after a long, but not so bad flight.  The time change was a little rough the first day but we still got out and wandered the streets.  Bangkok is a colorful city full of interesting smells, and extraordinary architecture.  We hit the most famous Buddhist temple, the Grand Palace.  Here we saw the Emerald Buddha which was discovered in Laos before 1435 and was brought to Bangkok many years ago.  They thought it was Emerald, and later decided it was a huge piece of jade.  After the temple we got ourselves some Pad Thai.  The food has been delicious.  We headed back to our hotel and ran into the fish tank, where you can soak your feet and legs and let little carp looking fish eat off all the dead skin.  I went first and then made Eugene join and he did not like it.  After about five minutes you get use to it.  Then we got a Thai massage half hour for four dollars.  Just what the doctor ordered!!
The next day we checked out the temple What Po where the Golden Buddha and the Reclining Buddha live.  After checking out the temples a monk approached us and took us to view a ceremony for a deceased monk.  He was very nice.  After leaving the temple our day turned into a Celestine Prophecy style. We needed to make a plan so we decided to head to the train station to scope it out and buy a ticket to the next destination; on our way we ran into a nice fellow who told us it was a holiday weekend and that we needed reservations for everything, then he put us on a tuk-tuk to a private temple where we met another guy who told us the same thing and told the tuk-tuk man to take us to the Tourism Authority office to make our plan. The whole time we are thinking this could be bad or it could be good.  So we went with it and then we did something we never do....we booked transport, lodging, and trekking to six different destinations for the next two weeks.  So we will see how it goes and tomorrow we head out to Chang Mai.