"smells like bangkok" or "smells like teen spirit in an irish pub"

so we made it back to bangkok on the overnight train...

it really wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be (which is good because we have another one tonight to get down to Krabi, the first of the three beach areas we're going to in the south)... but mostly the train was good because a) we bought subway sandwiches to eat -- our most expensive meal so far fyi -- and b) because we watched Rudy on my laptop. So clutch...

we got into Bangkok at 7 in the morning and headed back to our hotel to say goodbye to our first group. Everyone expect Michael, one of the Australians, is heading off on their own adventures... it was kind of sad to have to say goodbye to everyone, since we'd bonded a lot already, but our new group seems like a lot of fun too and we're looking forward to getting down to the beaches with them.

After our goodbyes, we went to take care of some essentials -- mainly doing the most laundry and shipping home a box of stuff -- including our suits and all the presents we've purchased so far. Then, we headed to Bangkok's weekend market, which was huge and full of craft stalls and t-shirt stalls and any sort of vendor you could ever want... it was nice for a while until we accidentally stumbled into the "animal section" of the market. At first there were some cute puppies... but then there were hundreds more puppies in very small cages and literally hundreds of bunny rabbits and fish and turtles... it was like the most unsanitary pet store ever... in our attempt to get away from the grossness we found dozens of roosters stuck in cages and ultimately stumbled on what looked like a cock fighting ring -- needless to say we didn't wait to find out if it actually was a cock fighting ring... instead we got out of there as quickly as possibly and jumped in a cab back to the hotel.

Even though our cab was metered - a rarity in bangkok -- our cab driver drove us in circles, but luckily we've reached the point where we knew we were getting ripped off and called him on it... even though we've only been in thailand for about ten days, we're already starting to get a feeling for the way things work around here -- and how to protect ourselves... so that's comforting. And we're even starting to get used to the heat and all the weird street smells -- well, actually we're just starting to brace ourselves for the heat and the smells -- we dunno if we could ever really get used to it...

When we got back to the hotel, we passed out for about two hours, a much needed nap. At 6 pm we met our new tour group. Pretty much everyone has already been touring in the north of Thailand, like us, and is now ready for a relaxing beach vacation. Even though we have a new tour group, Su is still our leader, so that is awesome.

After our meeting, we headed out to dinner with Michael and two of the other new girls on our trip. We made our way to an Irish pub -- because Paul and Danielle, friends from our last tour, told us that there was an awesome cover band there. After dinner - steak and beer - we headed upstairs for more beer and lots of music along with Michael and our new friend Jules, a british girl who had just landed in bangkok hours before...

The band really was awesome -- they played everything from Red Hot Chile Peppers to Areosmith to Nirvana... hence the smells like teen spirit bit... we were out pretty late and were so drunk on our short walk home that we didn't seem to be phased by the fact that there was a elephant standing in a street. Good times...

this morning, Su took our group on a tour of a really cool temple, Wat Arun (note: the temple was really cool, decorated with Chinese mosaic pieces and the central pagoda was very tall... we could climb up about half way to the top but the catch was that the stairs were really tall and narrow, practically going straight up and down like an awkward thai concrete ladder -- the way up was fine, but coming down Lindsey suddenly got scared of heights while Josh was brave and went down first. Let the record show that Josh is not a wimp.) and now we've just had a free afternoon to repack our bags, write this blog most, take showers and buy more subway sandwhiches before heading off to catch our next overnight train.

Don't worry... we're watching back to the future on this one...

- Lindsey and Josh