Good Morning :)

It's my second morning in Bangkok, my other friend Dan arrived last night. Yesterday Matt and our new friend Rob from England explored the city. We took the Skytrain to Central Pier where we caught a boat down the river. Boat seems to be a very common mode of transportation. The river was SO busy, it was like rush hour. We were on the public transport boat, the biggest on the river which I was glad for. All the smaller boats seemed to be yielding to us which was probably in their best interest. The river was VERY polluted, I don't think anyone should be swimming in there. I can't imagine there are any fish in there either, and if there are I don't think anyone would be able to eat them. I'm pretty sure we saw a dead cow floating along the river (Matt checked it out with his binoculars haha). I have never traveled with someone who had binoculars before but I guess they come in handy for situations like that... if you really have to know if the floating thing in the river is a dead animal, or just a piece of wood. We started out at Wat Po, the highlight there was the Reclining Buddha. It was a huge (HUGE!) gold Buddha laying on it's side in a room. Also on the grounds were other temples and little statues of Buddha. After that we walked through a market to get to The Grand Palace. I often feel that once you've seen one palace/ temple, you've seen them all. They're very beautiful, detailed, ornate, sparkly, golden... but without knowing some history about the temple it could be anywhere. The Grand Palace was created in 1792- I like imagining how it was built back then, how long it must have taken. I also like to imagine what the palace was like when it was still in use. There are paintings all over the walls of these buildings that portray what it could have been like. A lot of Buddhists still come to these temples and statues of Buddhas to pray. We saw a lot of monks there saying prayers and bowing. You're not allowed to face your feet towards the Buddha so you have to sit on your knees, otherwise a Thai security guard comes over and blows his whistle at you... luckily that didn't happen to us. My general feeling of Thailand so far is a good one. Everyone I've interacted with so far seems genuinely interested in helping you. Unlike India where I felt like everyone just wanted to get money out of you. I haven't been bombarded with people trying to sell you things or take you in their cabs. We'll see if that holds up for the rest of my trip- it'd be awesome if it did because people in your face all the time gets exhausting. I think today is our last day in Bangkok, tomorrow we'll head out- either to Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) or Vientiane (Laos). We're going to explore some more today and make our plans for tomorrow. I don't want to jinx anything but I'm feeling good- I haven't been sick yet and I haven't been super jet lagged. <3