Bangkok, Thailand

Due to a small miscommunication, we flew in separately to Thailand from Seattle on different days :) 

We met up on Khao San Road - tourist Mecca of Bangkok. We figured it would be the easiest place to find each other and we did on August 6th without much trouble. Each of us traveled with 40+ pounds of children's books for our new library in Prasot village so we were happy to put our heavy bags down and get a good cold beer and a Tom Kha soup. 

That was pretty much the extent of our enjoyment on Khao San Road... We were quickly put off by the hoards of drunk tourists, prostitutes of all varieties (and genders), and the new "laughing gas" vendors which have popped up since we were here last year. They sell you a balloon full of what we assume was nitrous oxide which tourists huff for fun while their eyes roll around in their heads.. 

Feeling grossed-out by the scene, we walked to a different area and took a private ride in a long tail boat which was really great. We saw a couple of massive monitor lizards tanning themselves on the shore amongst stilt house villages built over the river. It's the kind of river you want to keep your mouth shut while traveling on because of the filth. Chris had a little too much fun reminding me to shut my mouth :) 

We started on the main river and then did a loop through some small canals.

Feeding the massive catfish below

These monitors were about 4 feet long head to tail! 

It was really interesting to see how people live on the water.

Our driver was a total badass.

An "intersection" on the canal

Soup vendor cruising by.

Lots of stairways to nowhere 

That afternoon we headed to the airport in a taxi to catch our flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Upon arrival, we realized we were at the wrong airport. There is a smaller airport on the north end of town called Don Mueang, about an hour's taxi ride, the concierge tells us. We feel like idiots. 

We catch another taxi and we only have two hours until our flight leaves so we count off the minutes while the driver pushes through the Bangkok traffic. Finally, we get to the smaller airport, (DMK) with 45 mins until our flight takes off so  Lauren gets us cut to the front of the line.  

Relieved that there is a glimmer of hope, we hand our passports and tickets to the airline check-in guy who looks at the tickets and then looks up at us and says, "your flight is tomorrow." 

Soooo... it was back into taxi number THREE for us... our tails between our legs.  

We ended up staying in a decent guesthouse called Gem's Place, not far from the airport, although after our taxi ride we checked the map and saw that our driver had no idea where he was going and thus we traveled about 3x as far as we needed. Found some great Thai street found just around the corner, which seemed to ease the pain of our incredible airport folly. 

We returned to the airport the next day and made it on the correct flight where we were greeted by our friends, Sara, Nin, and Mainan. 

Oh yeah, and we found the best fake pizza toy from fake Pizza Hut...