Thailand emails i sent

July 30th

I just flew into Bangkok, Thailand safe and sound this evening. It's crazy to think I'm in Asia! We haven't been into the city yet, and I assume the city will actually look like a city. It's been a bit hard trying to communicate not knowing any Thai, but our guidebook has some helpful phrases. "kurpkoon ka" means thank you, and "sawut dee ka" means hello. Catherine and I found a nice place to stay, thanks to a Canadian couple we randomly met in the streets on old City. It's pretty clean (Cat is afraid of encountering cockroaches) and the room has air conditioning. The weather at landing was a humid 31 degrees, and that was about 4 hours ago, and it's still really warm - we couldn't wait to change into something more summery!

Catherine and I aren't sure about certain things like water. We'll try to drink from bottled water all the time, but the food is pretty safe I think. Thais really pride themselves with their food, so you're likely to get something good. My dinner was Pad se-ew noodles, which was really good. Thais eat 6-7 times a day, so thankfully the portions weren't as big as when you get take-out Asian food in Montreal. The exchange rate is that 100 Baht is about 4 Australian dollars, which means, dinner, at 80 baht wasn't even that much. I'm not used to thinking in Canadian dollars anymore, but when we exchanged our AUD for THB at the airport, it seemed like Australian and Canadian currencies are pretty similar at this stage. I'm not sure what this means for the economy, but at least it won't be as weird for me when I come back! But that's a bit off topic...

It seems the shopping will be very good. I don't have anything that I really need to buy but I'm sure I'm going to end up purchasing a couple of things. Cat inquired at a couple of places on prices and once they offer a price, which we were just interested in knowing so we say thanks and walk away, but they want to sell so badly that they instantaneously drop the price about 50%. And things are really cheap in the first place!! Everything is open for barter. I'm definitely not good at bargaining, but I think the walking away trick works really well, so far!

So it's only been a couple of hours. We're going to be in Bangkok for the next few days before heading north to Chiang Mai.


August 1st

Hey everyone! Sawut-dee ka!

I know it's only been a day or two since my last update, but so much has happened that I just feel like I need to update!

Health: Both Catherine and I have a cold, sniffling here and there, an occasional cough, but all in all, we keep ourselves hydrated, always buying bottles of water, and we buy fruit a lot of the time (mangoes, papaya, mangosteens, other weird thai fruit...)

Food: Thais eat 6-7 times a day so the small portions served make it really easy for us too to adopt that eating regime. Last night we had dinner from some of the many street vendors. The food is really good (and well cooked) and for such a low fee (about 20 baht = a bit less than 1 AUD). After dinner, we sat out in an outside bar, and met some other pretty cool travelers, and had some cocktails. One thing you can't really bargain for is alcohol, but the prices, however fixed, we still good. Tonight, we went to chinatown and ate at a seafood restaurant. I had seafood in thai soup which was excellent.

Weather: There are three seasons in Thailand - wet, dry and hot. All three of them are ahave temperatures between 25 and 35, but now it's wet season. It rains really hard for about 5-10 minutes around 2-3 pm then for an hour or two around 5pm. The weather is still really hot, so a little rain isn't a big deal. After the first whole day here, we decided today it was a good idea to bring an umbrella. It doesn't rain for too long, but it rains pretty hard.

Activities: We live in a backpacker area, on a street called Khao San Road. All day there are markets and food stalls, but mainly the street comes alive at night. We often buy food from the street vendors, or some souvenirs etc, but also there are bars on the streets at night, live music, and lots of enthusiasm! We spent the evening on Khao San every of the three nights so far, and we have one more to go. We've travelled in a tuk tuk a few times; tuk tuks are cute open 2 passenger-1 driver cars that are a bit unsafe and shaky but are heaps of fun! They're really cheap if you bargain and they can drive you around short distances and even wait for you for the ride back! Yesterday, we visited the standing buddha (stands 26 m high), the sitting buddha temple (nice and quiet, and a guy there taught us how to do a prayer to the buddha), and finally we went to the Grand Palace (where the king Rama 1 first lived) and the temple of the Emerald Buddha. The Wat (enclosed temple) where the Grand Palace and the emerald buddha is, is really well preserved and really beautiful!! I tried to do a prayer to the Emerald buddha but I'm pretty sure I did it wrong. The Emerald Buddha is the most sacred of the Buddhas in Thailand, so I'm sad I messed up that prayer. Today, we woke up bright and early to go to the famous floating markets. We tried a bunch of different fruits, but a lot of them had a similar flesh to a lychee. Our favorites are the mangosteens. There are purple on the outside, and spherical, with a dark pink peel the color of raspberries, but the flesh is white are parted just like a pumpkin, and look the same color as lychees. Very sweet. the vendors all have a boat and they are packed with heaps of fruit or other goods, and we get into boats of 6people and stop the boat or vendors when we want to buy something! It was quite an experience!! We rode along the Chao Phraya river (running through Bangkok) on the ferry numerous times today. We also visited the Wat Arun, also known as the Temple of Dawn, which is decorated by lots of broken pieces of porcelain. It kind of reminded me of the Gaudi buildings in Barcelona, I think, even though that was a long time ago. Tomorrow, the plan is to go the Dusit park, an area for monks with beautiful gardens, a palace and a zoo. Then we will go into downtown to do some shopping!

That's it I guess. Going to Chiang Mai on friday!