Hello again! Sorry this entry took so long, I've been distracted by all the photos I've had to upload! Well, the bus from Siem Reap wasn't exactly the scam bus, but it certainly wasn't what we'd paid for. It was more of a chicken bus. Anyway, it brought us to the Thai border where we spent almost two hours waiting to clear immigration. There were separate lines for Thais and for foreigners and the foreigner line was out the door. The Thai line, on the other hand, never had more than 6 people in it. And the Thai line had two immigration officers to check passports - the foreigner line only had one, despite the vast difference in volume. After we had cleared immigration we took a minibus to a restaurant where we were forced to wait for another hour while they tracked down the large bus that would bring us to Bangkok. We didn't arrive in Bangkok until about 8:30 - very different from the 4:30 arrival I was told of when I bought the ticket. The bus just dropped us off on the side of the road in Bangkok - no one really knew where we were. But there were a few people I had met on the bus who had lived in Bangkok for a time and they seemed to have some idea, so I just followed them into the backpacker area around Th Khao San. I found a decent guesthouse with affordable rooms, grabbed some pad thai from a street stall and crashed.

My first day in Bangkok was mainly errands - boring stuff like 1) find Boots and buy more dramamine because otherwise you won't survive public transportation 2) buy more passport photos so you're not turned away at the Lao border 3) exchange baht for US dollars so you aren't ridiculously overcharged for your Lao visa 4) buy a bus ticket to Vientiane 5) buy an extra suitcase that you can leave at the guesthouse in Bangkok so you can drop all the extra crap you've been carrying with you since Vietnam, and so on. Fun day. Except I was lazy and didn't accomplish everything on my list. What can I say, it's really hot here, which isn't incentive to do much. So my errands actually took two days. I did also manage to book day tours out of the city, because I realized that if left to my own devices I would never make it to the places I wanted to see. Again, it's the heat.

So, I ended up spending my birthday on one of these day tours. We left early in the morning to drive out to the floating markets. We were brought up the canals to the market itself in a cramped little boat that seemed as though it was about to capsize every time it make a turn. Then we were left to our own devices while we wandered around the market, snacking on mangos and coconut ice cream. After a couple hours at the market we were loaded up onto different buses depending on where we were heading next. I was on the bus heading to Kanchanaburi and the Tiger Temple so we left and drove for a couple hours. We stopped to have lunch and I met Paul and Danni, a British couple who had quit their jobs to teach english in Thailand. They had arrived less than a week before and had spent most of their time in orientation, but had a few days to spend around Bangkok before heading off to their village. We continued driving until we arrived in Kanchanaburi and spent about an hour walking back and forth across the famous bridge over the River Kwai.

Then it was back onto the minibus for the Tiger Temple, which was the part I had been looking forward to all day! We arrived at the compound and walked, slowly (it was hot!), to the tiger enclosure. They were chained, but were given space to roam (and they may have been drugged). Danni, Paul and I got in line to have our pictures taken with the tigers. A staff member took our cameras and led us around to about 5 or 6 tigers, telling us to sit or crouch next to them and to touch them - firmly - on the back. I guess I wasn't touching one firmly enough because it ended up whacking me with its tail. I had thought the tigers would be softer but their fur felt very wiry, like a german shepherd's. Then we wandered around the enclosure for a while looking at the rest of the animals on display. Other than a few more tigers and a jaguar (leopard?), the animals are all allowed to roam freely through the compound. Then it was back onto the minibus for the 3-hour drive back to Bangkok. About an hour into this drive our minibus broke down on the highway! We had to get out to push the minibus out of the way, and fortunately the driver got it to start again. We made it back to Bangkok and I went out for pizza with Danni and Paul - I haven't had pizza in more than 4 months, leave it alone. And it was my birthday. Then we did more sightseeing along Khao San (bootleg DVDs of House and Dexter!).

The next day I went on another day tour to Ayutthaya, one of the ancient Thai capitals. We left early in the morning, again, and spent the day wandering around the remains of the old city. We saw several wats, several stuppas, two giant reclining Buddhas and dozens of sitting Buddhas. The main sites are set a ways apart from each other. It was difficult to get an idea of what the city had been like in its heyday. Nothing remained of the royal palace except foundation stones. We grabbed some coconuts to cool off, and those of us who weren't going on to the summer palace hopped on a minibus back to Bangkok. I sat next to an Argentinian woman and we had a very interesting discussion about the 2001 crisis in Argentina and the recession in the US.

My last day in Bangkok has been spent packing everything I don't need into an extra suitcase that I'm leaving here at the guesthouse while I go off to Laos and Chiang Mai, and wandering around aimlessly while trying not to spend any money. I'm off to go grab some cheap pad thai for dinner, and then in about an hour I catch a sleeper bus to Vientiane. I'm hoping it will be my last sleeper bus for this trip.