Often By Land: Tuk-tuks, Wats and Bangkok

I did some intelligence gathering before we left, asking anyone who had been to the places we were going if they had any guidance, tips or recommendations. The one piece of advice that kept coming up over and over again was this: Bangkok is a shit hole. Don't stay there longer than 24 hours. And it's true. It's the kind of place that is so hot you want to wear flip flops, but is so dirty you dare not expose your feet... an enticing combo if there ever was one.

However - not one person let us in on the secret that Thailand's capital city is also the "Venice of the East"... tres romantique!

Sadly, though, while Venice's canal water is probably made of wine, Bangkok's canals are its sewers. Hmph. No worries, though, we were mostly taking the boat ride on the Chao Phraya River and it's adjacent waterways to experience the Floating Market... a supposedly totally chaotic scene of small vendors aggressively maneuvering their boats to bargain for the most baht.

Ours was a market of one, though. I'm still not sure where everyone was on a Thursday early in the afternoon. We spent about five minutes haggling down the exorbitant price the one old lady out on the water had quoted for two magnets and a beer... which we still ended up paying around $10 for.

All was not lost, though, because our boat ride eventually brought us to our first Buddhist temple of the trip, Wat Arunratchawararam Ratchaworamahawihan... or Wat Arun for short.

We said 'khob-khun-ka' to our boat driver ('thank you,' feminine form) and got the hell out of Bangkok on a flight to the most northern province, Chiang Rai.