Rainy Bangkok

As per our earlier post (the last post was Andrew's...so although he didn't meet my demands of posting before we left, he did post when we got here...and I'm sure we all appreciate the pictures, so I think I will keep his name on the blog) Bangkok is very wet right now. We got stuck in such a downpour that we splurged on a $2 Tuk Tuk ride back to the Hostel. I say splurged because we have embraced frugality to the max since we got here. If anything costs more than 100BHT (approx $2 CDN) I refuse to pay for it. The rain was so bad we were soaked! My shoes were completely wet, my shorts were drenched, my bagpack soaked, and that was while wearing rain gear! I'm looking forward to the Monsoon season being over soon. The good news is it didn't really rain up until mid-day today.

We have become awesome negotiators...and by "we" I mean Andrew...but I egg him on and tell him I refuse to pay more. The buns we buy for breakfast cost around $0.10 each and they come with a hot dog! We keep a daily log of all our purchases and we try to stick to a $20/day budget for the both of us.

We have been trying to adjust to the time difference and it has made us a little slow. We were going to change hostels today to move somewhere closer to Koh San Rd. and find a cheaper hostel, but after we checked out of our current hostel we realized they have free baggage storage for up to 2 months. I can't belive it took us 3 days to realize that! So we decided to stay for one more night. This extra night will allow us to re-pack because surprise! we over packed! and this way we will be able to leave some extra things here.

I have fallen in love with the Tuk Tuks! Except for the fact that we are constantly driven around stores that sell suits! Yes we keep falling for that scam but it's really hard to avoid it. Either way we have a lot of time so it doesn't really bother us that much. Yesterday someone tried to con us into the "Gem Stone" scam. Being the savvy tourists that we are (not really we just read about it in the Lonely Planet guide) we didn't fall for the scam and were told by the guy that he's never met such stupid people like us! We thought that was pretty funny.

Otherwise we have just been walking around the city but the weather being what it is, it kind of prevents us from doing much. We are meeting up with Andrew's friend Bobby either today or tomorrow and him and his wife have graciously invited us to their cottage near Kanchanaburi, west of Bangkok, next weekend. The plan is to meet up with them over the next couple of days, do a couple more touristy things in Bangkok and then go to Kanchanaburi on Wed/Thurs and then meet up with Bobby and his wife at their cottage. After that we will probably head south to Koh Samui, but that will depend entirely on the weather.

We'll post pics soon but right now except for the rainy weather, there's really nothing to post!

Day 2 Bangkok

Our first day the weather sucked. It rained all day. So we went to Khao San road and enjoyed some local brews.


Click Here for Pics.

Bangkok, Thailand

We arrived in Bangkok last night, and after getting our visa's we needed to figure out how to get to our hostel. The easiest option was taxi, but being in cheap mode we decided to take the train. And I'm so glad we did because it cost us $1 per person to get here. We had to take 3 trains and it tooks us probably 3x as long as a taxi would, but we spent a lot less than a cab would have cost. So I'm happy to report that since we have arrived in Bangkok we have only spent $2! When we finally arrived at the hostel they upgraded our room from a double with a shared bathroom to a double with a private bathroom! So we now have our own room with our own private bathroom. We went right to sleep as we were exhausted, and woke up around 8am local time. The weather here is very hot and humid, but it's raining. I am blogging from the lobby of our hostel(Lub D Hostel - Siam Square) and we are now going to try and find something to eat.