Elephants and Monkeys and leeches, oh my!

Yes, I think I probably used this blog title before, but in Thailand – the Land of Smiles we got it all! After getting 70% settled into our new apartment and a last minute hot water leak the morning before we left, Will and I took off for Bangkok for 6 days/5 nights to get a little rest before Will’s big new job starts on October 15th!

We stayed they Royal Orchid Sheraton and decided on a week of light activities although we could have done a lot more. We had a day trip to the Khao Yai National Park where Tracy got attacked (that is a strong word) by 2 leeches! One was a rookie but the other one got some good blood out of me. Boy does that natural blood thinner they inject do wonders – I bled for a good few hours. For the record, I didn’t scream at ALL! That and it was nice that the guide reminded us that leeches only go after pretty people.

Next stop – Elephant ride! Okay – I know this is probably very touristy, but hey, we got to ride and feed bananas to an elephant in Thailand - it was great!

Wednesday was Tracy’s day of shopping, uh, I mean a cultural tour of Bangkok seeing some of the temples (aka “wats”) … while shopping. We found some cool art and enjoyed the Jade Buddha, the sitting Buddha, the reclining Buddha and the standing Buddha (did I miss any?).

The next to last day was Will’s day. He wanted to take a James Bond Long Tail boat ride through the canals of Bangkok (aka The Venice of the East). We made a stop at the Snake Farm (2nd one ever to open that milks poisonous snakes and makes anti-venum). After the snake farm we rushed home again and changed and made our way to the International Guitar Festival for a concert. At intermission Will went up to talk to this guy and then blew him off because he wanted to look at the pretty guitars. We find out at the end of the concert when they announced a special guest would be presenting flowers to the performer that we blew off the Ambassador to Argentina. Sigh…. We had a good chuckle over that as you can imagine and tried to sink lower in our seats!

All in all Bangkok was great and we only really scratched the surface – and that was just the city. The people were nice – even when they were trying to play a fast one – oh they just didn’t know that we have lived in China for a year – we are such worldly travelers don’t ya know.

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