Yesterday's misadventures

Fuck. FUCKING FUCKING FUCK. I just wrote this fucking blog post again. Really really long. And again, it disappeared.

One more time, from scratch. Every time I rewrite it, it gets worse.

Ok, so maybe yesterday wasn't all misadventures. Some questionable adventures and one definite misadventure. I blame the lack of sleep.

Starts off well enough. We get into a Tuk-Tuk and start getting carted around from temple to temple. That's nice enough. Maybe I'm dead inside, but the giant Buddhas (Buddhi?) dont' do that much for me. I mean, I appreciate the grandeur and effort, and I think they're pretty, but they don't really move me. (An aside: I find it interesting that Buddhism, which in my admittedly limited understanding seems to be among the more grounded, anti-materialistic religions, would place such an emphasis on golden shrines. Anyway.)

Still, so far so good thus far. We're seeing the city, we're cruising around, the breeze is blowing, it's not that bad. Next stop: The tailor. No, we didn't ask to go to the tailor, but we're go-along-to-get-along types, so we went along. The instant we walk in, we're handed a card for free gasoline for our driver. At this point, a well-rested Andy or Alex would've raised a suspicious eyebrow or two, but we were decidedly not well-rested. We go talk to the tailor. Apparently, buying suits is A Thing To Do over here, so we talked to him for a while.

We somehow talked each other into buying suits. I'm not quite sure how. And this goes into the questionable adventure category, because it was cheap and assuming we get what we paid for, I won't be mad about it. Still, probably not the best idea on the first day of the trip. After that, more Buddha.

Next stop is the TAT info Center. TAT stands for Tourism Authority of Thailand, except for when it doesn't. Clever travel agents like to incorporate it into their names to fool less-clever travelers, including your humble narrator. Again, though, this isn't quite a misadventure. Our agent, Ninja (seriously), had some good ideas and recommendations and we booked some transport and accomodations for the next week. It may not have been the absolute cheapest way of doing it, but as long as we get what we pay for I won't be upset.

More Buddha.

After that, we have the biggest disappointment of the day, unquestionably a misadventure. Lunch. It should've been easy. Our driver asked us if we liked seafood and we said we did, assuming we'd be taken to a good seafood street market or something along those lines. Far from it. We ended up in a ridiculously expensive restaurant that did a very good job of not showing prices until it was time to pay at the end. Let's just say it was WAY too expensive, obscenely so, for the completely underwhelming food we were given.

Somewhat upset after being scammed, we were taken to one more temple and then separated from our driver. This temple offered a scenic view of this crumbling, crowded, sprawling city.

We walked back to our hostel and accidentally took a four hour nap. Jet lag's a bitch. The evening was better. We wandered around, ate some cheap and decent street food, drank a couple beers and listened to a Thai band do a passable cover of "Don't Look Back in Anger" by Oasis. Definitely the highlight of the day.

It's all uphill from here.