Korea

February 3, 2007

Day 2 - Bangkok, Thailand & Travel Day/Delhi, India

Day 2 - Thursday, January 18th - Bangkok, Thailand and Travel Day/Delhi, India

We wake-up EARLY, AGAIN!!!! For those of you who know me, I am NOT a morning person at all!!!!!! But I was up and ready to go at 6am!!!!! We wind up waiting for 45 MINUTES for our pick-up van to take us to the floating market!!!! UGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!! It's all good though!!!! We got picked up and were off to shop more!!!!!

Poor TashM is still suffering from "Bangkok Belly", but is foregoing it for shopping. GOTTA respect that!!!! We pick-up a few more friends along the way that are also on the tour with us and are off!!!! Here we come "Floating Market"!!!!

This is a picture of one of my new friends. I spent about 20 minutes bartering with her for the best price possible for our boat tour/shopping for the floating market. The floating market is literally what it sounds like... a market that is on the water. You get in a boat, float down the water, and shop!!! AMAZING!!!!!

Here is a pretty shot of the floating market with the sun shinning through the over lay.

The market is full of AMAZING things to buy and fabulous colors!!!!
Exotic fruits...
Exotic drinks...

It can be VERY busy at certain points...
...and very calm at other points.
But it ALWAYS has exotic animals in the water waiting to SCARE ME HALF TO DEATH!!!! Now for those of you who know my love for animals of all kinds, (HA!!) when I saw this in the water I about had a HEARTATTACK!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here is another shot of one of the 'shops' on the water...

...and a long shot of the market. The shops went along for miles and miles!!!!

This was our group on a different, motorized boat. TashM and me!!!!! It was a beautiful day!!!!

After we went down the floating market and shopped more, we went for an ELEPHANT RIDE!!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you believe that I rode on a HUGE ELEPHANT!!!!!! To top it off, TashM and I ALMOST DIED!!! OK, not really, but it sure felt that way!!!! The seat that we were sitting on, I guess, wasn't tied on right. SO, at certain points I was WAY up in the air and TashM was WAY down, and at other points I was WAY down and TashM was WAY up!!!!!! Again I say, AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Here is a pic of how high up we were and how big the elephant was. Look at the size of our feet versus the elephants head!!!

After we got off our near death elephant ride, I decided I wanted to feed the baby elephant. It was SO CUTE!!!! I fed it baby banana's.

After I fed it, the baby elephant did a mini-show for us. SO CUTE!!!!! Here is the baby elephant playing basketball. He also did a hula hoop routine and played the harmonica for us!!!!!!

At this point in the show they ask me to come up and lay on the table. I did, on my back, and they said no, on your stomach. If you can't tell by the look on my face, I am a BIT nervous as to what is going to happen and be done to me...

...I lay down and they cover me with a blanket. I am still a BIT nervous and watch carefully...

...I then realize as they say "back massage" what is going on. SO CUTE, and it actually felt really good. They had the baby elephant use it's trunk to massage my back. I layed there and enjoyed!!!! (if you couldn't tell... hehehehe )
Time was up for today. We got back in our van, and headed back to our hotel. As each of our new tour friends left the van one by one, we said goodbye to our new friends. TashM was especially sad to say goodbye to her new MALE friend from her home country. She got email and digits!!! GOOD FOR YOU GIRL!!!!!
We got back to the hotel, packed, and got down to our hotel for our airport pick-up. Here is where the DRAMA began. TashM was flipping through all of her stuff and we were doing our "checklist" to make sure we had everything. I say... "Passport TashM?" She searches... and Searches... and SEARCHES......... NO PASSPORT!!!! Her case that she carries in her purse with her passport, credit card and ARC card is GONE!!!! I try and keep her calm. We have our taxi go back to the hotel, (we only got about 5 min drive away from it before we realized this) and she goes back to the room to look for it... It's not there. She calls the tour company to see if it is in the van still... It's "not there". (I will explain the "" later on.) The "lucky" part of this is that she had the envelope with her money in it, in her purse. She carried her money with her passport, but for some reason, THANK YOU GOD!!!, the money was still in her purse. TashM came to the airport with me to see if she could get on the flight somehow, but they wouldn't let her. Which really, we both knew would happen. I took her to file a police report in the airport, got her ticket changed for her, and tried to keep her as calm as possible. (while trying to stay calm myself) Needless to say, Natasha had to stay in Bangkok for an undetermined time until her passport/visa issues got solved. I had to go on to India BY MYSELF!!!!! She was scared. I was scared. It was SCARY!!!!!
I got on the plane, sad and scared, without TashM. The flight was fine. There was a very nice business man from the USA originally that had been to India a lot and gave me TONS of advice after hearing my story. When we got to the airport in India, he showed me the best way to get to my hotel and what company to go through.
I arrived at the hotel that I was to stay at that night and the next. The one that TashM and I had arranged for prior to leaving India. Hotel Ajanta. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! REALLY SCARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Driving up to the hotel at 11pm at night, in the area it was in... I was SO scared. As it turns out, the hotel was actually really safe, but doing it alone was VERY scary. It was SUCH a culture shock. Little did I know that the culture shock that I was experiencing was just the beginning.
I got to my room, tired and scared, and about died!!!!! Was I really supposed to sleep in there!!!! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! I had a shared bathroom out in the hallway. I got there so late because my plane taxi'ed in the air FOREVER, so I got the last room. The ceiling was about 40 feet high, and 3/4 of the way up there are two small rectangle windows, one of which was open. I, even as tall as I am, was not THAT tall. I then called the front desk and asked if someone could please come up and close the window for me as I could not reach it. They then told me that it does NOT close! It was fixed to stay open... AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! I then proceeded to say that I would like to switch rooms please. They said that I had the last room in the hotel for the night, but tomorrow morning they would switch me. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep that night. I fell asleep to screaming, dogs fighting and other noises that I couldn't even begin to explain. I did fall asleep though, eventually. I just wanted the day to be over so that I could start the next and get TashM to me ASAP!!!!!!

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