Missed the train

Andrew and I have been pretty busy. Got some more fittings in at the tailor and took our bikes for a ride through the streets and alleys of Bangkok. It's much easier to ride a bike on the streets here because I think other drivers are always on the lookout for bikes, carts, scooters, etc. Don't worry - we wore our helmets!

We took a waterway tour of the city's canals, which was just okay. It was nice to see how people on the water live and some of the wats (buddhist temples). However, the boat driver kept pulling over next to other boats trying to sell us stuff. And then at each wat we got out to see, there was a 20 baht "landing fee." However, we had the boat all to ourselves and it was nice and breezy on the water. One lady tried to sell us a loaf of bread to feed the thousands of catfish(?) in the water. It was a total ripoff, but fortunately, the people in the boat in front of us were suckers and did it, so we got to the reap the benefits without forking over our cash. And by benefits, I mean we saw a bunch of fish breaking through the surface of the water trying to eat the breadcrumbs. Similar to feeding pigeons.

It is very hot and humid here, but not as overbearing as I thought it would be. Even the air from riding a bike was nice. I'm usually sweatiest standing around:) It's nice having Andrew's skillz here - after we put the bikes together he helped me get it really tuned in. Fixed the seat, handle bars, and gear shifters.

Got our visas back from the travel agent at 6pm last night, so we're covered there. After that we met up with a colleague of Perin (Deloitte US) who's travelling the world - Harley Young. Small world! We got a beer and wandered around the city for a while. We laughed a lot and that was fun.

So everyone we talked to said the train to the Cambodian border left at 6:30am in the morning. So we got up at 5, put most of our stuff in storage and took tuk-tuks over to the train station. Got there at 6:05 and it turns out we missed our train by 10 minutes. Stupid trains! Next train leaves at 1pm, so we have some time to write in the blog and check out anything with air conditioning. Aranyaprathet is the border town we're going to. We'll stay there tonight and cross the border tomorrow. The train station has a luggage storage area, put it's just a huge pile of bags with a piece of paper staples to each one. We ended up locking our bags and bikes together to a metal gate. Don't worry: there is a piece of paper stapled to one of our bags, so it's official.

We were planning to go back to the hotel to tell them we left something back in the room: our sleep. But we got to this Internet cafe first. Oh! And we found a Dunkin Donuts, so that was nice treat after the train ordeal.

Andrew and I got Thai massages too, and they were pretty cheap (about $8 for an hour). It was really nice and relaxing until she got me in a full nelson, put her knees in my lower back and rolled onto her back. I'm still a little sore from that! Harley said he doesn't like them because it's like wrestling a panda bear.

We're off to see if we can get some hammok time somewhere air conditioned. I don't even know if they have that, but it sounds like a sweet business opportunity!