Justin Gilmore

Let me say this…I’ve learned that Bangkok is just a craphole of a city. For most of the people I talked to at my hostel even, it’s just dirty and gets on your nerves. It’s a great place for getting to other places, like northern thailand, laos, cambodia, myannmar, and others, which obviously i didnt have time to do. But today i did manage to take a day trip out of town which was just awesome. After today, I’d love to be able to come back and hit some of those places.

First I got to ride the train. That was a treat in itself. Third class seat cost me like 70 cents. And let me say, it wasn’t worth much more than that.

Went about 2 hours north to Ayuttaya, the old capital of Siam. Had lunch at a nice outdoor place…Thai basil and chile with chicken and rice. Good stuff. By the way, in Thailand, they don’t use they fork to eat…they use it to scoop food on your spoon. Putting the fork in your mouth would be like putting the knife in your mouth in the US. I did it anyway.

Then went to the wats. These were built before Christopher Columbus was even a thought in his parents’ minds. Just insane to imagine that. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

And then I took a “tuk tuk” back to the ferry, which takes you to the train station. Tuk tuks are an annoyance–in Bangkok, every driver wants to take you somewhere. However, i had to do it once. They’re on 3 wheels, and the way they sound makes a lawnmower sound like a purring kitten.

I’ve got loads more photos, which I can share when I get back…also got tons of video. I head back to Taipei on Thursday. I’ll be buying flash memory cards and the like on Friday, so put in your orders now. I expect to be paying 25-30 bucks for 2 gig USB drives.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 5:20 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.