Barbequed skewers of chicken for sale.First of all, it takes a long, long time to get there. Our guidebook didn’t actually tell us how long, but it took the better part of three hours.…

We got a cab over to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (and what a ride it was!). It was the most disappointing and "tourist trap like" of all the wats we saw – there was video slot Buddha machines just outside the temple, lots of souvenir stands, etc.…

  We headed out first thing in the morning on our walking tour. A lot of the best sites and "must-see" wats are within walking distance of each other. We first tried to find Wat Mahathat but..…

The cab dropped us right off at the hotel we had reserved a few nights before which we had found from our trusty Let’s Go guide book. Anyways, we are told the hotel was full (despite the credit card reservation), but there is another hotel they will take us to.…

The airport is well run and smooth. There is a fairly organized taxi coupon system in place that fixes the price, but also adds a surcharge. The cabbie tried to persuade us to ignore the system and surcharge and it would be cheaper but we stuck with the fixed price we had been quoted.

We got to Bangkok via Tokyo, on the strangest ticket we’ve ever seen. It was bought from Expedia and involved many unrelated airlines. SFO to Tokyo was on Northwest (codeshare with Continental).…