Obsessions of Asia

We are woefully behind on posting since we came back to the United States. Despite having almost constant access to computers and the Internet, we have focused our time on seeing family and friends. Even for me, it is hard to say, "Mom, I know you haven't seen me for two years, but I just have to get those Obsessions posts done..."

So, without anymore excuses, here come Asia's obsessions:

India- Spitting. An easy one. The average Indian might spit 1200 times per day. And we aren't talking about small little bits of spittle. We're talking about pieces of lung the size of a fist. Sure, lots of Indians also have a paan habit (think chewing tobacco, but different ingredients that also happen to make one's spit Kool-Aid red), but even those that don't chew still spit. And before the spitting comes a noise that sounds like the regurgitation of a cow. Wait, most Indians don't eat cow, so a goat. Like hawking up a goat.

Sri Lanka- Water tanks. What is a water tank you ask? Well, I'm going to tell you even if you didn't ask. A water tank is a man made lake. Sri Lanka has a lot of areas that are at altitude and are very wet for part of the year, but very dry for the rest of the year. So, starting a thousand years ago or more, digging giant water pits became the prerequisite for growing any large city that wasn't on the sea. And they did it with gusto. Some of the cities have dozens of lakes that are far larger than many dammed lakes in the US, and they were all dug out by hand. Or maybe with hands and a rock and maybe a chisel, but you get the point. Good job, ancient Sri Lankans!

Malaysia- Tourism posters. If all the Asian countries were elementary school students, Malaysia would get the "Tries Hardest" certificate at the end of the year. Not only are tourism posters in nearly every window of Malaysia, they are in nearly every hotel and vaguely related travel business everywhere in Asia. They must have printed millions of them. And that makes it even sadder that more people don't visit Malaysia, which really is a spectacular country.

Singapore- Rules. Singapore has rules for everything. And fines for not following most of them. The list of fines in the subway cars was as long as my arm. (We especially appreciated that one of the highest fines was for bringing the smelly durian fruit on the train.) If you like to conform, consider moving to Singapore. If you have ever voted Libertarian or are a card carrying member of the Tea Party, consider vacationing somewhere other than Singapore.

Indonesia- Cats without tails. Didn't see that one coming, did you? We saw hundreds of cats in Indonesia and every one of them had some or all of its tail missing. We can only assume that people think they should not have tails and take it upon themselves to cut off the tails with whatever sharp instrument is laying around when they see a cat with tail intact. We thought that we might see this in other countries, but it was really just Indonesia.

Thailand- 7-Eleven. Think of all the 7-Elevens you have ever seen. Multiply that number by 100. That is how many 7-Elevens are on the average block in Thailand. It used to be a joke in New York that Starbucks would often have locations right across the street from one another. 7-Eleven in Thailand might regularly have three stores on a block. I don't understand how they stay in business, especially since they are more expensive than most Thai businesses, but they all seem the thrive. Since I love Slurpees, I thank the Thai people for making cheap Slurpees available everywhere.

Burma (Myanmar)- Gold leaf. I had never heard of someone's job being to hammer gold until it was gold leaf. In Burma, that ranks as one of the most popular jobs. Where does all that gold leaf go? Buddhists in Burma buy the gold leaf and then rub it onto the Buddha statues (or anything else that they believe should be gold) at the Buddhist temples. This keeps everything bright and shiny. Oh, I should point out that only men are allowed to do this. Women aren't allowed to touch the Buddha statues, but can buy some gold leaf and have a manly man rub it onto the Buddha.

Cambodia- Angkor Wat. It seems sort of lame to be obsessed with your biggest tourist attraction, but Cambodia unquestionably is. It adorns the flag, half the stores in the country are named for it, and it inspired enough awe that even Pol Pot didn't destroy it. And Pol Pot destroyed just about everything in Cambodia.

Vietnam- Motor scooters. The average person in Vietnam has 3.2 motor scooters. Approximately. Through a quantum trick, they ride all of them simultaneously. So, while Vietnam has only 80 million people, 250 million people ply the roads on motor scooters at any given time. And most of those 250 million are going down the road that you want to cross. The streets of the large cities look like a moped convention.

Laos- Fruit shakes. I try to find something deeper than a food for country obsessions, but fruit shakes made with fruit, condensed milk, sugar, and ice are what hold the country of Laos together and makes the whole country so friendly. That's pure speculation, but locals and tourists alike can be found drinking delicious and cheap shakes all over the country, and we were certainly fans. For those who are not feeling happy enough after a regular shake, many places seem to offer "happy" shakes, which come with whatever drugs they happen to have in stock (pot in most places).

China- Crotchless pants. No, China isn't turning into 1980s New York. Any child under the age of three in China wears pants with a giant slit down the crotch and no underwear underneath. This allows them to go to the bathroom anytime and anywhere they like. And I do mean anytime and anywhere. Let's say the kid is waiting in a busy ticket line inside the train station with the parent and needs to go to the bathroom--that's what those pants are for. Number one or number two? Doesn't matter. Does the parent clean it up? No. It stays there for others to step in. While China seems likely to take over the world one day, we hope they get rid of crotchless pants prior to that.

Mongolia- Chengis Khan. Yeah, I thought it was Genghis Khan, too, but not in Mongolia. This founder of the Mongol Empire is known for uniting the nomads of Mongolia, declaring war on anything that moved, killing about a bajillion people, and creating the beginning of the largest empire the world has ever known. That, of course, makes him the hero of Mongolia. Based on our experience, I don't see the second coming of the Mongol Empire anytime soon.

There you have it: the obsessions of Asia. Disagree with us? Too bad. Write your own blog. Or leave us nasty comments about how we disparaged your country. That's why our home address isn't on the blog. Well, that and we don't have a home yet...

From Rupees to Rupiah: Financing Asia

All through our travels, people told us how cheap Asia would be...and, looking forward to bringing down our average daily budget, we hoped that they were right. Luckily, they were!

Here are the numbers by country. In case you forgot how we do this, these numbers are for two people, including visa costs and all costs on the ground (and in the air if we took internal flights). Sometimes we also include the cost of a flight into the country if that was the only way to get there.

India: $53 per day. Visas cost $74 each at the embassy in Istanbul. India is one of the cheapest countries we've been to, so staying there for five weeks did wonders for our financial (if not gastrointestinal) health. Hotel rooms ranged from $10-$25 depending on level of comfort (except in Mumbai, where it's hard to find a double for less than $50); restaurant meals could usually be had for a buck or two, and street food for pennies; and train transport in sleeper class cost less than a hotel. Not getting ripped off on cabs and tourist excursions required some negotiating.

Sri Lanka: $80 per day (including flight from Chennai, India, which costs about $120 per ticket; $53 per day without flight). No visa fees. Sri Lanka's hotels and food were a little more expensive than India's, but it made up for it with what is possibly the world's cheapest public transport on a $-per-hour basis. If you plan to visit more than two historic sites in the "Cultural Triangle" area, getting a pass can save you $25 or more.

Malaysia: $47 per day. No visas. Some travelers complain about Malaysia being pricey, but as it turns out, the only traveler item that is really expensive in (Muslim-majority) Malaysia is beer! As long as you don't drink much, the country is terrific value, especially considering how developed it is. Air-con double rooms with shared (but very clean, hot-water) bathrooms cost $10-$15, and delicious, cheap street food abounds. Transport is a little pricier than some Asian countries, but you usually get comfortable, AC buses on smooth roads. We stuck to the peninsula this time and didn't do any fancy tourist excursions, but our memories of our previous trip to Borneo are that prices were very reasonable there, too.

Singapore: $111 per day. No visas. We only spent two days in Singapore, so this is kind of skewed, but it's certainly one of the most developed and expensive countries in Southeast Asia. Most of the cheaper hotels are in the red light district, where we found a decent private room for $35 a night. Public transport, museums, and restaurants are comparable to Western prices, but taxis (which are metered, hallelujah!) and street or food court foods are relatively cheap.

Indonesia: $102 per day. One-month visas on arrival at the airport cost $25 each. Indonesia was surprisingly expensive, though that's largely because we did a lot of pricey activities like SCUBA diving, chartering a boat to Krakatau volcano, and a few other organized tours. No-frills internal flights between the islands were a pretty good deal, usually less than $50 one-way and could be booked just a day or two before. Buses and trains on the ground varied a lot in price and quality. Hotel rooms for $10-$15 could be found, but were usually pretty disgusting; if we wanted cleanliness and AC, we usually had to pay at least $25. Cheap street food could be found in most places, though not so much in touristy Bali, where we usually had to shell out for real restaurants.

Thailand: $83 per day. No visa fees. Considering how many touristy activities we did in Thailand (diving, elephant training camp, etc.), this is a great average. Hotel and transport standards are pretty high, but competition for the tourist buck keeps prices low. Markets selling cheap local food are pretty easy to find, and even fancy restaurants are probably cheaper than the Thai restaurants you find at home. Just try not to get robbed, which could certainly send your costs soaring!

Myanmar: $77 per day. Visas cost $27 each in Bangkok. This average includes flights into and out of Yangon from Bangkok ($130 each roundtrip), which accounted for one-third of our expenditures there. Once you're on the ground, Myanmar (Burma) is super cheap in all categories, though its rough roads, ancient vehicles, and power cuts often made it feel more like traveling in sub-Saharan Africa than Southeast Asia.

Cambodia: $53 per day. Visas cost $20 each at the border. Cambodia is excellent value. $11 a night got us rooms with bathroom, AC, and sat TV in both Siem Riep and Phnom Penn, the two most touristed cities in the country. Markets and restaurants offer cheap food; bus transport and tourist site admissions are pretty reasonable. If we had stayed longer, or ventured out to less touristy places, it probably would have been even cheaper, but even so, Cambodia was one of the cheapest destinations on our trip.

Vietnam: $66 per day. Visas cost $45 each in Phnom Penn, Cambodia. Vietnam's one of those countries that feels more expensive than it is, probably because people are trying to rip you off almost continuously. But we did manage to stay in some pretty nice hotel rooms and eat decent food for not a lot of money. Trains cost more than buses but are much nicer (which isn't the same as saying that they're actually nice!), especially for overnight travel. Halong Bay overnight cruises can be an especially good deal for a decently swanky experience...provided your boat doesn't sink in the night, of course.

Laos: $57 per day. Visas cost $40 each at the border. Laos is pretty poor, so the roads and buses aren't always the nicest, but hotels were quite comfortable, food was inexpensive, activities like kayaking were very reasonable, and prices overall about as cheap as could be.

China: $92 per day. Visas cost $160 each in Vientiane, Laos--the most expensive of our entire trip. (They are about $100 less expensive for non-Americans, though.) Yunnan province, in southwestern China, was incredibly inexpensive; with $10 hotel rooms and cheap bus rides, it cost no more than Laos, where we had just come from. As we moved east and to the bigger cities, things got more expensive, though you could always find cheap and tasty food, even in Beijing. In general, China didn't feel overpriced considering the good quality of rooms, trains, and food that we got, and some tourist attractions, like the Forbidden City, were surprisingly reasonable.

Mongolia: $121 per day. No visas needed for Americans, though most nationalities need one. This number is high because we spent 6 of our 8 days in the country on a private jeep tour of the Gobi. If we'd managed to find a couple of other travelers to share the tour with, costs would have been halved. Otherwise, the country's pretty budget-friendly: In Ulaan Bataar, the capital, a hostel room with breakfast, Internet, and shared bath cost $15; there were expensive restaurants and cheap local-food canteens to choose from; and the 15-hour train from the China border cost around $9 for seats, or $25 for sleeper berths.

So, Asia had a few expensive countries, but was mostly pretty cheap for us. Hope that this post was slightly helpful to you if you're planning to backpack through Asia. If you have any questions, leave a comment and we'll do our best to get back to you!

Sticky and Spicy: Foods of Thailand

We came into Thailand with some pretty high expectations regarding the cuisine...and if we've learned one thing in our travels, it's that high expectations usually set you up for disappointment.


So I'm happy to report that there's lots of great stuff to eat in Thailand. The tasty flavors of lemongrass, and galangal, and basil abound. The sweets are weird and fun. And it's definitely, overall, the spiciest cuisine we have yet encountered. It may not have blown us away quite as much as the cuisines of, say, India, or Ethiopia. Like Ghana, it may have snuck in a little too much fish sauce to make the very top tier of our world food experiences. But it's got a solid spot on the second rung.


We begin our Thai culinary adventures in the south, which is known to have the most chilli-fied food in the country. At the small night market in Phuket town, I got an assortment of veggie-filled dumplings with brown sauce. Not so spicy (phew!) but delicious!
Then I moved on to the meat. The number one most surprising thing to us about food in Thailand was the huge popularity of sausages. Despite their absence on Thai restaurant menus in the USA, they're everywhere in Thailand, and range from the humble chicken hot dog on a stick to the true delicacy of subtly-flavored Chiang Mai pork sausage. My personal favorite may be the crunchy deep-fried sausage (yes, I have classy taste).
While I was trying these relatively innocuous street foods, Andy ordered some noodles from a market stall. They turned out to be both fishy and incredibly spicy. Like a champ, he powered through the whole bowl, pouring so much sweat that the stallkeepers called over their friends from around the market to watch and laugh at the white guy eating their crazy-hot local specialty. Fastest way to make some Thai friends! I guess we forgot to take pictures, but a good time was had by all.

As a reward after his noodles, Andy bought a sticky dessert, served in a banana leaf. I don't remember much about the taste, but it was really, really sticky.
At the supermarket, I thought that this fruit-topped concoction was yogurt, but it actually turned out to be just gelatinous sweet stuff (maybe from coconut?) with fruit on top. That's what you get when the packaging is only in Thai...
What to eat for breakfast in Thailand? Noodles, of course! We went to a vaguely Chinesey place for some "dry" noodles with pork...
...and noodle soup with chicken. The soup was much more gelatinous than I expected, but I got it down.
Thailand's most famous noodle dish must be pad thai, and you can find it cheap in many places in Thailand. Rice noodles, a sweet-and-sourish tamarind-based sauce, and plenty of bean sprouts seem to be the key ingredients--egg, prawns, meat, various veggies, and peanuts are often also options.
Andy skipped the pad thai and went for a pork-and-basil dish with rice that was really fantastic.
On to Bangkok, which has no shortage of street food...or restaurants...or food courts. Yup, there's a lot of food in Bangkok--we had some good, some bad.


We began with a sugar rush: gelatinous rice-flour balls with desiccated coconut and a lot of brown sugar syrup, served in a plastic bag blown up like a balloon, which is a popular way to encase your street food in Thailand.
Tom Yam is Thailand's famous hot and sour soup, which often comes with various types of fish in it, as well as noodles and some veggies. We ordered the pork version, hoping that meant it would come with only pork. Wrong! You still get all the fish balls and fish cakes, just with a bonus of some sliced pork. Ah, well. The broth itself was delicious, but we didn't love all the fish.
Back to the street for some preserved fruit products. A bag of tiny, sweetened bananas (left) came with bonus bites of sugary dried tamarind (center) and an unidentified, fruit-roll-up-like sweet sheet.
Khao San Road, the "backpacker ghetto," was not our favorite part of Bangkok, but we did manage to find some cheap and tasty curries at a no-name restaurant nearby. I got a chicken red curry (foreground) and Andy got a pork green curry. Probably not authentically spicy, but not bad for about $1.50 a plate.
Thai iced tea was a drink I loved in America and then totally forgot existed until I saw it on the street in Thailand. Joy! Big, strong, sweet, cold cups cost just 50 cents and really hit the spot when you've been walking around in the sun for a while.
Phak bung, or "morning glory" is a popular green vegetable in Thai cuisine. I was unfamiliar with it, so I had to order a dish. It came stir-fried with some chicken in a very spicy sauce, and I felt very healthy while eating it.
Note from Andy: Tara forgot to caption this picture, but it is pork floss with rice. Pork floss is sort of like pork turned into cotton candy. I don't know how they do it, and probably don't want to know, but it is very light and fluffy strands of sweet pork.
Dragon fruit soy milk! Actually, it just tasted like regular soy milk, and I was sorry I'd paid double for it.
Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, probably had the best food we tried in the country. The beef noodle soup I ordered for lunch on my first day featured beef chunks and beef balls, but no surprise fish! The yellow drink is chrysanthemum tea, a sweet herbal drink that is popular in several other Asian countries, too.
Chiang Mai's night market is definitely touristy, but its food hall had a few bargains. We enjoyed our first taste of Chiang Mai sausage (top), and followed it up with yellow curry with chicken and potatoes (mine) and a galangal- and lemongrass-infused, coconut-broth dish (Andy's).
A smaller, less touristy market in the older part of Chiang Mai sold amazing sticky rice dishes, which we enjoyed for breakfast. The white and blue sticky rices don't taste different, but the blue color is much more fun, no?
The cheaper option is to get white sticky rice with a slice of gelatinous custard on top. It's wrapped up in a banana leaf to make an easy takeaway package and costs around 35 cents.
The more expensive option is to get a whole fresh mango sliced on top of a mound of blue sticky rice and sprinkled with some salty, crunchy things. I didn't love the crunchies (or the styrofoam container), but the rest of it was amazing. Cost was $1.35.
The same stall sold some other, vaguely sweet, unidentifiable snacks, and Andy bought a few bags to try. I can't remember what this was or what it tasted like, but I know that I didn't care for it!
In case the Thai sweets aren't your thing, Thailand sells a great selection of international candies, including both Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and...Rocklets!! That's right, Argentina's very own knockoff peanut M&M product is widely available in Thailand for about 50 cents a bag. I was really happy to be reunited with my old friends, especially at the end of a long hike to this waterfall.
Two English girls we met on a day tour around Chiang Mai recommended the Hot Chili restaurant in town, and we sure are glad we took their advice, because it was fantastic--probably the first meal that really beat our high expectations for the country's cuisine. My pumpkin (and other stuff) curry came served in a hollowed-out coconut, which allowed me to scrape fresh coconut from the inside into every delicious bite...
...and Andy's Massaman curry was probably the yummiest thing we ate in Thailand. And it wasn't terribly expensive, maybe $3 or $4 US per dish. High marks!
We must also thank Tom, our elephant camp guide, for sending us to a restaurant that specialized in northern Thai dishes for our last dinner in Chiang Mai. The best Chiang Mai sausage and a Massaman-like, Burmese-influenced curry were the stars of that meal.
Back in Bangkok, Andy couldn't pass up the chance to try lemongrass juice. I don't love lemongrass the way Thai people (and Andy) do, but it wasn't bad.
Thailand has a lot of nice salads, the spicy papaya salad being the most famous. I never did get one of those, but this carrot-based salad wasn't bad. And that looks like chicken on top. I sure have been eating a lot of chicken lately...
On our final night in Bangkok, after our trip to Myanmar, we splurged on a fancy restaurant...which means that we paid about the same amount that we'd pay for a meal in a Thai restaurant back in the states. Andy's green pork curry with fruits and my red duck curry were very tasty and nicely presented, but we were kind of annoyed that we asked the waiter before ordering "Do the curries come with rice?" and he emphatically said yes, and then later, we got charged for rice. "Oh," he backpedaled furiously, "Of course I meant that you must eat rice with the curries! But the rice is not free." Sigh.

We are now in Cambodia, where the rice most definitely is free. A meal without rice? Impossible to imagine here! So, we'll revel in that for a while.

Thailand: Can Millions of Tourists be Wrong?

Thailand has a great tourist reputation, but given the number of people we know who have been there, we assumed it was also touristy. We didn't really know what to expect (as was made clear when we completed a tourist survey about our expectations for the country versus the reality), but the country is a mix of beauty and rampant tourism that makes it a mix of amazing and frustrating.

Our first stop in Thailand was Phuket, a famous, beachy island that was not as tourist-crazy as I expected. We stayed in Phuket Town, which is where locals actually live and not on the beach, and just took a daytrip to the beach. As soon as you hit the touristy beach area, no more locals and everything doubles in price. The beach is gorgeous, though. Here is a sand castle that we built using mostly just the cup from the Slurpee that I had bought on the way to the beach.

Why not build a massive serpent on the beach? Tourists love it, Buddha loves it, locals love it.
From Phuket, we headed to Bangkok. We passed through Bangkok three times. The first was spent on Khao San Road, aka the backpacker ghetto. If you like spending your time with thousands of backpackers between the ages of 18 and 24 who are normally drunk by 8pm, this is your scene. If you prefer to sleep without hearing the sounds of multiple, terrible cover bands wafting through your windows, we suggest staying elsewhere.
Lots of stores in Bangkok sell giant Buddhas. Some are plastic straight from China, some are stone, wood, or other artistic creations. Walking past so many massive Buddhas always made us smile.
Bangkok is full of malls. Many are as fancy as the fanciest malls in America. In the nicest of these malls, the one with Ferrari and Lamborghini dealerships in the mall, these are the bathroom signs. We thought this was hilarious.
Near Siam Square, the hub of malls, is a walkway over a busy road where about 10 people are taking pictures of the street at any given time. We joined in so as not to feel left out. It gives you a sense of how developed Bangkok is.
In another fancy mall, they were selling high-end vibrating chairs. Tara tried one out, and I stood by afraid that it was about to eat her. I don't think she was too impressed, despite the high tech look of it.
Many buildings have small shrines outside. This one, outside a fancy hotel, has become known as the shrine to go to for lucky lotto picks. Really. Tons of lotto sellers stand outside. If the shrine grants you luck and you win, you can hire dancers to dance for you in celebration.
Bangkok is home to Jim Thompsom's home. I had never heard of him, either. He was an American who stayed in Thailand after WWII and started a huge Thai silk business. He was also a CIA operative. He got rich, built a mansion by reconstructing old Thai houses, then disappeared without a trace in the forest of Malaysia while on vacation with friends. An interesting story and an interesting house to visit.
Thailand has more massive Buddhist temples than can be counted. We visited dozens and will spare you pictures of all of them. Here is one of some monks praying to an especially nice looking Buddha. The big Buddha often has helper Buddhas that are smaller. Strength in numbers seems to be the idea.
Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, is a center for Buddhist temples and has what seems like a few on every block. Several, like this one, date back to the 13th century. They are ornately carved and decorated. The first one you see is beautiful, the second is nice, and the third is repetitive.
Inside was this monk, who did not move at all. I thought he was fake and walked to about two feet away before concluding that he was real and veering away quickly. However, we saw some very life-like imitation monks in Thailand, leading to the question: is this a real monk or a fake plastic monk? I'm still not sure.
Thailand has 7-Eleven on every street. Even the monks shop there!
Carved soap flowers are popular tourist items in Thailand, and are really amazing. They start with a bar of soap and hand carve a flower, which is then painted.
In Chiang Mai, we visited an orchid farm as part our our day tour. It was more interesting than expected. They grow thousands of orchids for sale and export, so all the blooms are an impressive site.
Thai boxing allows you to hit the opponent with your fists, elbows, knees, or feet. A knee shot (presumably to the groin) is considered the most amazing. We watched this match where the guy being punched in this picture was destroying the other guy by kicking him in the side and the head. But, he got cocky, put his gloves down while kicking the guy, and got knocked out with a single punch to the face. Definitely more interesting than normal boxing, though not less violent.
Thailand is home to many Karen tribe "long necks" who have fled from northern Myanmar. We visited a village of about 40 of them, who now support themselves largely through tourism. Many of them speak English, though few speak Thai. Very interesting to talk to. And the neck isn't actually stretched--the coils are so heavy that it pushes down the shoulders and makes the neck look longer.
They change the coils about once each year. It is not true that they will die if the coils are removed, as is often believed, but they don't leave the coils off for long.
They start the coils from the age of five or so. Boys are exempt from everything--no coils, no costumes. It has apparently always been that way. Seems fair.
The baby elephant is just 11 days old. It was cute, but didn't let us ride it.
Several of the Karen sub-tribes also have massive hoop earrings. This woman's are big, but some groups have much bigger.
We hiked to a nice waterfall where we swam in the freezing water. Very nice in the hot, humid climate of Thailand.
These funnel spiders are common in Thailand. They sit and wait for food to come into their funnel.
We did a half day program with elephants that was a lot of fun. The place keeps 20 rescued elephants (mostly elephants that formerly worked in logging) and teaches people how to care for them. Here I am with the baby elephant (about a year old) kissing me with his trunk.
Great outfits, huh? Most of the mahouts wear blues and grays, so they give us these outfits to help the elephants feel more comfortable with us.
Just taking a stroll through the jungle on our elephant. More comfortable than it looks, actually. Riding the elephant bareback is at least as comfortable as riding a horse with a saddle.
Let's hope that elephant was clean! Tara hasn't come down with elephantiasis yet, though.
Want to see inside the mouth of an elephant? Okay. They have just a single, huge molar on each side that is behind the skin in this picture. They chew everything with those.
We were with two other Americans who decided to walk part of the way. They kindly allowed us to ride their elephant, so we each got our own elephant for part of the trip.
After riding them, we had to wash them. Then we had to pull Tara away from her elephant.
Back in Bangkok, we went to visit the Royal Enclosure and the Expensive Temple. No, that isn't the real name of the temple, but if you ever visit Bangkok, just ask for the Expensive Temple, and I think that anyone will point you in the right direction. In fairness, it is also the nicest. Lots to see there.
Some nice guardians to keep the evil spirits at the door. If I were an evil spirit, this guy would cause me to pause. Then I would realize that he was a statue and continue, but I guess that most spirits aren't as smart as me.
Wat Phra Kaew (the real name for the Expensive Temple) is surrounded by murals finished in gold leaf. The gold really makes them stand out.
Most of the buildings in the complex are surrounded by ornate carvings and decorations.
Next to the Temple is one of the royal palaces. Some of it is open to the public. Here is one of the thrones that is really beautiful inlaid mother-of-pearl. This is the best picture I could get with a guard standing in front of it next to the big sign that said no photos.
The temple is home to the famous Emerald Buddha, which is actually made of jasper. It was hidden for many years under plaster, and then one day they dropped it and found out that it was stone inside. The abbot at the time apparently thought it was emerald when first seeing it and the name stuck. He is probably the most famous Buddha in Thailand, but is only a few feet tall and sits about 50 feet in the air, making him hard to see. Here he is wearing his winter outfit. Right, they change his clothes seasonally.
Monks are according special rights in Thailand. For instance, on the subway, you move for old people, pregnant women, and monks.
On our third trip through Bangkok, we visited Wat Pho, another huge temple complex. It is famous for having the biggest reclining Buddha in Thailand and for having one of the first massage schools. Here are some of the many gold-plated Buddhas on display.
They are refinishing the murals of different massage points, but this is how you massage your client.
Unless your client is a ten-armed monster, in which case his massage points are fewer despite the increased number of limbs.
Here we are with the massive reclining Buddha, which symbolizes the Buddha's exact moment of enlightenment. Myanmar has a bigger one, but we didn't actually make it to see that one, so you'll have to settle for this one.
The feet of the reclining Buddha are ornately decorated with inlaid mother-of-pearl. Despite being so big, they didn't stink at all.
Thailand loves the king. And the queen, but mostly the king. He is everywhere. Here is a fairly typical site, with giant posters of the king. Most of the time, they are from photos taken at least 20 years ago. Don't want your king to look old, after all.
Well, that finishes a long post on Thailand. We saw many great places in Thailand, and most of the people are really nice. However, like anywhere with so many tourist, a lot of shady characters exist. Most anyone involved in tourism, from taxi drivers to waiters, is a little bit slippery, as Tara rightfully said. From trying to charge you more to trying to provide you services you did not request to outright theft, the huge number of tourists sometimes lead to negative side effects.

Having said that, Thailand is still a country worth visiting and I'm sure that we'll end up going back at some point in the future.