whey you from? today yo lucky day!

Sylvan woke up at 6:30am and insisted that he couldn't go back to sleep and that we should get up and start the day... so we did. We had planned to go to a local cafe but it wasn't open so we strolled around until we found a long street full of open vendors. Fresh fruit and vegetables, every kind of fish and meat imaginable, and many other types of edible goodies that I was unable to identify. We were the only white people in sight and I loved it. Toward the end of the street I spotted a coffee/tea stand serving totally authentic thai milk tea in a bag. We watched some of the locals order before us so we knew what we were getting and how much it should cost. The woman preparing the tea spoke very little English. We said "Cha" which means tea in Thai and then held up one finger: One Tea. She made it for us, poured it into a bag over ice, stuck a straw in it and handed it to me. It cost 12 baht, about 35 cents. It was the best Thai milk tea I've ever had.

Later that afternoon, we took a tuk-tuk and got taken for a ride. A Thai man who spoke surprisingly fluent English approached Sylvan and I as we enjoyed a bag of fresh pineapple and what I think was some form of mango. He asked us all of the normal questions. Where we were from, where we were going, if we liked Thailand so far... but unlike most people that approached us on the street, he didn't seem to be selling anything. He explained that he was a student from Phuket and that he studied computers. He asked us to pull out our map so he could see where we were planning to go. He recommended that we go to five or six different Wats, or temples, and which ones we should see first because Saturday was a holiday and certain temples were open at different times. He then gave us a brief explanation of the tuk-tuk system. The tuk-tuks with yellow license plates are owned by a private company and the ones with the white license plates are owned by the government. He advised us to always take a government tuk-tuk because the other drivers would take us to places we didn't want to go. He numbered the stops on our map and stopped a tuk-tuk for us. Sylvan asked him why he was being so helpful. The man explained that next year he would be a monk and that helping people would give him good karma. He was a very happy man and asked us to please think of him after our travels when we return to our country.

The tuk-tuk driver took us to the first two places that the monk suggested. The first was a beautiful sitting Buddha. Apparently this particular temple is only open one or two days of the month, on Buddhist holiday and we just happened to get lucky. The second stop was supposed to be a beautiful silk shot that many tourists enjoy, Vogle. We walked in, not knowing what we were getting ourselves into: "Hello sir, madame, today yo lucky day. Whey you from? How many day Bankok? Whey you go afta Bangkok? You come back Bangkok?" The men were very polite, they took us upstairs to one of the VIP rooms, gave us free bottled water, showed us Armani catalogs, and tried to sell us a tailor-made suit for about $1000. We politely declined and went back to our tuk-tuk. The driver said we should visit another sitting Buddha and a reclining Buddha and then he said we should stop at a souvenir shop. We had most of the afternoon free, so we agreed. He took us to a small temple. Sylvan and I were the only people there and it was a very calming and powerful experience. The next stop was a jewelry shop where we were once again bombarded: "Hello sir, madame, today yo lucky day. Whey you from? How many day Bankok? Whey you go afta Bangkok? You come back Bangkok?"

Our driver waited patiently in the car and did not encourage us to buy anything. Sylvan and I couldn't quite figure out if the driver thought we might like suits and jewelry or if we were being scammed. He seemed so nice and so helpful. Plus, he had taken us to two extra temples that we would have otherwise never seen. Our second to last stop was the Golden Mount. The monk told us to climb the stairs and ring the bell three times for good luck. Our tuk-tuk driver dropped us off, and said he had to go somewhere for something. We didn't quite understand him. When we were ready to leave, we walked back to where we had left our kind tuk-tuk driver to discover one of the privately owned tuk-tuks. A man approached us. He said that our driver's shift was over and that he would take us to the palace, which was our final stop. He described our driver, and knew where we were from and where we were going. Sylvan and I were skeptical, so we waited a few minutes for our driver to return. When our driver didn't show, we agreed to go with the new driver. He said, "I take you to palace for 10 baht," which is about 30 cents US (really cheap), "but first I take you to suite shop and jewelry store because I get gas voucher if you go there." This was a new development which explained why our kind tuk-tuk driver had taken us to the strange suite and jewelry stores. Because of our new drivers honesty, we agreed to go along for the ride. We made the requested stops, then went to the gas station. It was pretty neat seeing the tuk-tuk tank being filled with some kind of compressed natural gas. Then he took us to the palace.

We were starving so we grabbed a quick snack. When you are surrounded with new and interesting fresh food of every kind, it's dangerous to let yourself get hungry. You never know what you might decide to try:

Tomorrow we will leave Bangkok and head to Cambodia to see the ruins of Angkor Wat. We've decided to do a SE Asia loop: Thailand - Cambodia - Vietnam - Laos - Thailand - China Bangkok is the biggest international airport in the area so we'll fly from Bangkok to Beijing in late August. Because it is the low season in Thailand, many of the beaches are rainy this time of year so we'll save our beach time for Northern Vietnam, where the beaches are supposed to be beautiful this time of year.

Bangkok: