Barely in Bangkok!!

What I mean by that is a bit of a story so here goes!

We started planning this trip to Thailand about 2 months before we left New Zealand (or maybe even less, I can't remember) and there was a lot of shuffling and re-booking and stuff. We had to re-book our flights to Canada, then make bookings to Bangkok and then we wanted more time so we re-booked everything again. In the process our flight from Singapore to Bangkok somehow got missed. Not by us but by the airline. So when we got to the ticket counter after a long day in Singapore we found out that our flight was still booked for the next day (meaning we would have to wait a whole day in Singapore again (and overnight) without a booked hotel and we were pretty tired (that's another storey) Well the lady there said she would do her best to get us on the flight (standby) and we would just have to wait. Well we waited until 8:30 (the flight left at 9:00 until she said anything to us and then we got the good news that we were on and rushed through security, customs, and onto the plane! What a crazy day! I thought we were going to be stuck in Singapore (which isn't that bad really) but no, God had it under control once again (go figure). We arrived in Bangkok and found a taxi who took us to our hotel (with much confused miscommunication) and we had a pretty good nights sleep. The jet lag right now means that we are exhausted around 7:00 Pm Local time and are awake around 5 or 6 AM. Today we were supposed to get on a train to Chumphon but the 8:00 am one was full when we got to the station! We now have all day in Bangkok and we don't really know what to do with ourselves! Alas I have found an internet spot (1 Baht per minute and $1 Canadian is 29 Baht, you do the math!) so we thought we'd send a little email home!

Okay now I can tell you the storey of our day in Singapore! Well we woke really early and since we had all day we got up and wandered around. We found a good place for breakfast (ordered something off the menu, that we really didn't know what we were getting) at a little Indian restaurant. We then proceeded to a shopping center called Mustafa Center. When we first walked in the shop we found was the LARGEST jewlery shop you've ever seen. Literally, it was MASSIVE!!! Gold neckaces and big babbles EVERYWHERE!!!! John and I both kinda stood in awe for a few seconds at the vastness of the gold in every direction! We found a little grocery store and it is really quite fascinating what you find in grocery stores in other countries. Its funny what "Westernized" things you find. After shopping we packed up and headed out for a walk around the 'city' we decided that we wanted to go to the bird park, which on our map didn't look that far. We figured out the sky train thing and got to the end of the line (which looked close :) Well there were busses but we didn't really know what we were doing so we started walking! Well... 3-4 blisters later and a long HOT walk, we found the bird park and were almost too tired to walk around and see the birds! We especially enjoyed the Penguin display because it was cold inside :) Well we were smarter on the way back and took a bus and then the sky train (quite sophisticated really) and that brings us to the airport and the confusion with the plane tickets...

So that's all the news to date. Today, now with our new train, we don't leave until 7:30 PM on an overnight train (dissapointing since we wanted to see the countryside, but oh well). We'll see what adventures we can come up with today.

Oh, P.S. we also got to ride in a Tuk Tuk today. CRAZY!!! what made it even more crazy was that the guy didn't know where he was going and I'm pretty sure we drove in a few circles until John pointed out where we wanted to go! :)

P.S.S. It's a good thing that I've used blogger for a while because today here in Bangkok all the script on the screen is in Chineese Characters and if I didn't know where the 'sign' in button or the 'new post' butten were I wouldn't have had a clue! It's kind of like when you change the language on your digital camera and you have no clue how to turn it back to english because you can't read any of the menu's :) ??? Fun fun...

Until next time.... :)