That crazy place called Bangkok..

Our flight got into Bangkok at 9:00pm yesterday, we decided since we do not know much about the city we would go to the tour desk and find out about some hotels!
To our disappointment due to Chinese new years on the 29th most hotels are completely booked however she said their was a "new" hotel with one room left for 1500Baht/night ($45CAD) We hummed and hawed and after much time she offered to throw in a complimentary tour of our choice - We decided on the city and temple tour which usually costs $25Us/pp and is a 4hr tour. We got to the "new" hotel and was greeted by some very very friendly staff and a nice fresh fruit juice welcoming drink and then they showed us to our room.. Now when I think new.. I think new.. New carpet, walls, fixtures etc.. I guess when she says new she means built within the last 50 years.. Needless to say our room isn't beautiful but it does have a fridge and a TV with HBO... Good times! We are still adjusting to the time difference (We are going to bed about 8:00pm and getting up at 6:00am) so by 10:30 we were ready for bed!
We got up early and headed downstairs for our complimentary breakfast which was very good with lots of fruit, pasta and rice. Our tour was to commence at 1:00pm and when the tour guide showed up we found out it was just us so we got the personal tour which included being driven in her own car.. We got lots of information about Bangkok but as they started to drive Kirby started to get a bad stomach pain. We reached the first temple where we saw the largest gold plated Buddha - The people who found it, found a large cement Buddha - whilst moving the Buddha a piece of the cement broke off and underneath was gold.. They chipped away all the other cement to find the Buddha is actually made of gold plate..So it was pretty neat.. By the end of our first temple Kirbys stomach pains had gotten worse and we had to call off the remainder of the tour.. I got kirb into bed and after 1/2 and hour he was feeling better.. We figured it was the traffic and heat that made him sick. We decided at 3:30pm to wander out for the 1st time and find something to eat.
Now.. If anyone every trys to tell you that their is no excitement in Bangkok they are sorely mistaken! Our first adventure was we asked a Tuk Tuk to drop off us at a hopping road (We pointed to the map and he nodded) He goes around the block and trys to drop us off on the side of a highway - We finally get him pointed semi in the right direction when we saw a mall we wanted to go to so we got off and went inside.. The mall was not very exciting and filled with hundreds of stalls full of conceive items, we decided to continue down the street - Our second excitement for the night was running into the street vendor who only sold baked bugs.. My god was that disgusting beyond comprehension! Their are huge bowls of GIANT bugs just waiting to be munched down.. Now im all for trying out the Thai culture HOWEVER their needs to a line drawn somewhere, especially when some of the bugs are crawling with maggots and other ants.. Mmmm I guess that's a 2 for 1 special! Our appetite had been crushed until we got to the next mall and saw a sign for "The outback steakhouse!!" Now since we are on a budget we did not have the steak but I had a very nice shrimp pasta and Kirb had a BBQ chicken breast. We had been searching for one mall in particular and got a little lost on the way.. What did we see you ask?? Well of course we saw an elephant in the middle of Bangkok a city with a 12mill population.. Why wouldn't you see an elephant in the middle of a downtown public centre?? We also found a Dairy Queen along our ventures and had a blizzard for the first time in ages.. This is the first time we have seen a DQ since we left so we got a small blizzard for under $1.00 each and sat in a large square that was lit up by colored light bulbs and a large electronic TV (What they were saying I am afraid we will never know!) After such a long day we thought it was time to head back so we committed our lives to a man in a Tuk Tuk... For those who don't know a Tuk Tuk is like a 3 wheel motorcycle with a covered cart on the back.. Which lucky for us allows them to weave perilously throughout traffic risking often coming far too close to hitting other vehicles and also tipping over on its side.. I think it took us about an hour to walk to the mall we were at and he managed to get us back to our hotel in about 5min It was a wild ride of which my knuckles were white - Kirby kept the positive attitude that if we hit anything we will die anyways so he just sat back and enjoyed the ride. It was a really great day and although we enjoyed Bangkok and it is something you definitely need to see, I don't think we would make a side trip to come back here again.. We have tomorrow day here and then we will be taking a night bus (10hrs) to Surratthani and then the 10:00am ferry to Koh Penang which is our favorite place in Thailand, we should be staying there about 7 days.. we cant wait..
By the way.. It was 31 degrees today :P