We arrived safe and sound in Bangkok around 5am. Sleepy and disoriented, we paid a taxi driver 40 baat to take us the 5 blocks we could have easily walked to Khao San road. It was the first time on this trip that we've felt "scammed." We have certainly been overcharged for taxi rides, tourist attractions and the like in other countries... (Indonesia is a good example) but in those instances we knew what was going on at the time and just accepted it as part of the travel experience. Our Bangkok taxi ride was different because we were unaware of what we were "signing up for" when we agreed to the price. Bangkok has about 14 bus stations and we weren't sure where we were. Multiple taxi drivers had told us that it was 3km to Khao San road and at 5am we just couldn't be asked to get ourselves awake and organized enough to figure out where we were on the map. Still, the 40 baat we paid equates to about 1 US Dollar... so we comfort ourselves with the fact that although we were scammed... it could have been much, much worse.

Khao San road is the legendary backpackers ghetto in Bangkok and everyone seems to have an opinion on the place. It is said that local Thais, fueled by the press, consider Khao San road a place of drugs, freaks and cheapskates. Bangkok expats stay away because they are "beyond" such backpacker locales... as do upscale tourists who prefer more "sophisticated" neighborhoods. What we find interesting, however, is that you also come across many travelers/backpackers who are critical of the area saying that it's not "real" Asia. Okay, so it's true that you hear more English on Khao San than Thai and there are loads of shops selling travelers gear and restaurants serving banana pancakes... but, Khao San road isn't something you see at home either... and, for us, what made it interesting was the international flavor of the place.

We were fortunate to arrive at a particularly good time when the international atmosphere was at it's peak. The Euro 2004 football (soccer) tournament was in full swing and the preliminary group games were being shown nightly at all the pubs up and down the road. The "early" game started at 11pm local time and the "late" game kicked off at 1:45 in the morning. We watched England beat Switzerland 3-0 and thought of our friends Andrew and Emma who were there in Portugal...  (We hope you two had a great time!) and had planned to head off to bed. However, we were convinced by our new French friend, Laurant, that we should stay to see the France vs. Croatia game. It ended up being a fun night!

Partying, sleeping in and watching football weren't the only things that we got up to while in Bangkok. We visited the amazing Wat Pho also known as the temple of the reclining Buddha. The temple complex actually spans over 20 acres (although it doesn't feel that large) and contains the largest number of Buddha images of any temple in Thailand. Unlike some of the smaller temples or wats that we've visited, Wat Pho doesn't actually feel much like a place of worship but more like a museum filled with golden treasures. Even the architecture is truly beautiful.

Also as part of our sight seeing effort, we visited the Grand Palace. The palace's 100 brightly colored buildings, golden spires and glittering mosaics, dates back to 1782, when Bangkok was founded and is probably the biggest tourist attraction in the city. However, unlike Wat Pho, the temple of the emerald Buddha felt somehow sacred. Perhaps this was because there were numerous orange robed monks present in the sanctuary.

And, of course, no trip to Bangkok would be complete without doing a little shopping!! Bargains are everywhere... and were it not for the trip budget, we could have gone mad buying all sorts of great things to take home! We ventured out to the weekend market which is the mother of all markets in Bangkok (if not in the world!) There are over 1500 "legal" stalls plus numerous street vendors and an expected attendance of a quarter million people per day! It was overwhelming but fun!!

After our market visit, in preparation to leave Bangkok, we decided to do a load of laundry. There were several options and in the end we decided to do ours ourselves at a Laundromat located just outside our hotel. All seemed to be going well until we took the last load out of the dryer and discovered that there was something in the pocket of Mark's trousers. Well, you might be thinking it was lipstick or an ink pen that had run and stained numerous articles... IF ONLY we could have been so lucky!! Nope, it wasn't any of those things... it was our passports... our soaking wet, completely ruined passports.

A trip to our respective embassies was in order where we went through the process of applying(and paying through the nose) for new passports. Mark's will be ready in just a week, but Heide will have to wait until the day before we leave Thailand to get hers. That assumes that all goes well. In the meantime, we're not exactly sure what this means for our trip to Cambodia. We're thinking we'll still make the attempt to cross the border with Heide's old and Mark's new passport...