August 9th, 2009
Last Night…
WOW–got connected tonight–it is like a miracle.
We are getting packed up and ready to come home…let me just say it is a bit of a juggle to get everything in bags safely and within our weight limit.
We went to the big 15,000 vendor market today here in Bangkok (Chatukchak). No we did not even come close to seeing everything there–We may have seen 300 stalls and then felt overwhelmed, so we headed out. Realistically we could not have bought anymore than we did anyways…so it was wise to leave…I took some pictures but they will probably not be up until we get home. We rode the BTS there and back–I am so proud of us! The BTS is Bangkok’s high speed light rail transit, used mostly by locals–but there we were!
We had supper down the street from our hotel tonight and we were sitting there eating and saw an elephant walking down the street in front of the restaurant. I had heard of this happening in Bangkok–it is the ultimate form of elephant abuse really, but people make elephants walk the streets of Bangkok begging for money. It is so far removed from the experience that we saw for the elephants up in Chiang Mai–very sad. There was even a baby elephant walking with the Mama…the people wanted 50 baht to give them 2 little bananas. We fed elephants in Chiang Mai for 20 baht and we were able to give them a huge bundle of 15 bananas for that amount. It is weird to see and sad…
Needless to say, my memories of Bangkok from 7 weeks ago still run true. It is a noisy, polluted, crowded city and just does not ring my bell. My love of every other area in Thailand is not affected by this city–I can tune it out. It would just be a shame if all you saw of Thailand was Bangkok and you formed your opinion from this city–the rest of the country is so amazing, beautiful and peaceful…
We will be hitting the road at 7am tomorrow, being picked up by our Bangkok driver friend. He is going to take us to the floating market, the war memorial museum and also Kanchanaburi (River Kwai). It will be a full day that includes a 2 hour train ride on the famous railroad. We will be headed to the airport and delivered there by 8pm, in plenty of time for our 10:10pm planned departure to Tokyo.
See you all in a couple of days…we miss you all!
