We spent one day in Bangkok. If you can get over the noise, the smothering air pollution and the pea soup river, it's actually a beautiful place. It has over 300 Wat Temples, long tail boats on the river, excellent Thai Massages (for less than $10), and the people are extremely friendly, and the food is outstanding (Pad Thai, River Prawn, River Perch, mmm) It turns out that sometimes they are friendly because they con you into paying for their goods and services. We fell pray to a scam the first day when we took the river boat up to the Grand Palace. When we tried to enter a women with a pin on her shirt that told us that she was an official said that the Palace was closed for worship until 2 pm, and was only open to Thai's. She wisked us onto a tuk tuk and told the driver to take us to several sight seeing locations. The driver took us to several Wats and Temples, but also to jewelry and taylor shops which he explained payed for his gas to take people there. When we realized that there were several other groups that were taking the same 'tour', we knew it was a scam, and sure enough, when we got back to the Grand Palace, we found out it had never been closed at all. Oh well, it turned out to be the highlight of our day. We saw the whole city in just over two hours for only forty baht, which sums to around $1.08 US. And for those of you who don't know what a tuk tuk is, it's a three wheeled motorbike (picture attached). I think the drivers were trained by the kamakaze pilots. We weaved in and out of traffic at near the speed of light, coming within inches of buses and tourists and occassionally going down the wrong side of the road towards oncoming traffic. New York cab drivers have nothing on these guys. We're up in Chiang Mai now, which is the start of the foothills of the Himalayans. It's much calmer than Bangkok, and a little easier to breathe. There are just as many temples as in Bangkok, a much larger city, so there are saffron robed monks walking around everywere. I just sat with a couple of monks for about an hour at Wat Chedi Luang where they have "monk chat" and learned a little more about Buddhism, while Lindsay get's another massage. Yesterday, we couldn't figure out what to do so hopped abourd another tuk tuk and told the driver to drive us around for an hour. It turns out he was a monk for over ten years and took us to all of the temples in Old Chiang Mai and taught us about the ways they worship. We did several prayers for good luck (pictures to follow). I'm trying to convince Lindsay to see a Thai Boxing match. (We'll see, I may have to do that one on my own) We leave tomorrow morning on an overnight trek where we will ride elephants, raft down the river, and spend the night with a Lahnu hill tribe village family in their hut.