11-11-10: BKK = black snot and blood shot eyes! (pollution)

Same song, different verse. Sorry!

Bangkok day 2 notes:
Woke up latish, powered through cold showers and went exploring
Noodle/rice soup near our guest house (my house guest house) and a
mango shake because coffee was too hot
Walked to grand palace, getting directions from a man who told us the
palace was closed today until 1, go see standing Buddha instead; past
all manner of sellers and such offering all sorts of things, most
off-putting were the women who tried to get us to take dried corn from
them by stuffing the corn bags into out bag straps, several bags hit
the pavement as we dodged them
Found the entrance, put on pant legs so we could enter, paid our 350
baht a piece because we are farang and entered the grand palace.
- overwhelmed at first, took some time to read about the place then it
was much more enjoyable, still just taking lots of pics though, saw
the emerald Buddha and then the grounds of the palace.
- hungry, but right next to the reclining Buddha, so stopped there,
much nicer than grand palace because calm and not as many people,
wandered around quite a bit there
- now on to china town for fooooood
- but. No food to be found, just lots of consumer shopping.
- we bought a pepsi from a woman and stole her bottle, we declined the
bag, rob bought a sausage and we bought some donuts to tide us over,
finally found some noodle soup, yum
- water at the ever-present 7-11 and then a water taxi home which was
surprisingly quick quick
- bought an overpriced book on the way home so I would have something to read
- sat in a park and then found our way home to drink surprisingly bad
coffee, yelck
- next went looking for the night market as marked on the map, didn't
exist, went in search of a rumored night market p--p--. Got a
terrifying taxi ride over to patpong market....the center of the sex
trade where we were offered all sorts of terrifying things. If only we
had read the guidebook more closely we might have known better! But we
came to see Thailand, and this is a part of it. Made a few loops, felt
awfully out of place and got a tuktuk back to khao San road for a
belated dinner
- ate at a place where an Asian man was doing live covers of the top
100 classic rock hits (beatles and Dylan, etc)
- one more loop around khao San, didn't see anything new, just more of
the same, cept the food carts parked in the middle of the road, tried
green mango on the way home - too sour
- home home to bed