Monday, June 18

Greetings my fellow Calvineers! This is Rachel, back by popular demand!... well not really, everyone else was just too tired to write so I volunteered because I'm a the good kid of the bunch.

So today was our much anticipated day off, and you would think that a day off would involve sleeping in until ridiculously late hours...but no. It was quite the opposite actually as we left the Henry's house at 7:30 am which is even earlier than we usually do. This initially seemed utterly pointless and completely annoying... I mean, why do we we have to rush sight seeing? But then it became evident that we needed to get a jump on the long traveling time to and from downtown Bangkok in order to get any touring accomplished. Just hailing a taxi was time consuming. And even after that, it took a good bit of time to get anyway where, not only because the roads are bad and the traffic patterns insane (mostly due to the suicidal motorcyclists that greatly out number any type of car), but also because as we found out Monday morning rush hour traffic is definatly something not unique to the United States.

Once we had reach our destination in the actual city of Bangkok, we moved on to a different form of transportation... elephants! HAHA, just kidding ( i got u all excited there didn't i?) From there we traveled on the the Sky Train, which I imagine to be on the cool scale a step below elephant transportation, but it was still cool none the less. By taking the Sky Train, we were able to take a quick tour of the city in seeing things that we would not otherwise be able to see... such things as huge mansions, very tropical parks, and even the run down shacks that the lower class reside in. Once we got off the Sky train, and as we were strolling along the sky walk (sidewalk type of area above the streets that is used for walking and for loading the Sky Train), we observed that down on the street level, there was a huge shrine to Buddha (as seen many places, just not nearly as large) located next to this mall facility. And as the air around us smelled of smoke from the incense that the many Buddha followers were burning as they worshiped a golden version of their "god", we all silently prayed for their hearts to be convicted and to some how find the one true and living God.

Following that, our group loaded up on what seemed to be a river bus... it was a long boat that sat rather low in the water, with a canopy roof and open sides, and it sat about 50 to 75 people. And this boat took us to our main sightseeing attraction of the day... Wat Po. A Wat (haha, my joke was constantly asking "A Wat?!?") is basically a Buddhist temple, and this one looked every bit of one to be found in the orient. They are difficult to describe, but I'm sure there will be pictures later. One of the biggest attractions (literally actually) was this great big Buddha in a laying down position, made of what looked to be copper, and Buddhists hold this idol in such high regard they actually do not allow people to wear shoes in the building (which is typically a custom only in private Thai homes). There were also these very odd triangular looking structures called Cheddys (I think I'm using the right word here) that also resembled a giant fancy Hershey Kisses, that were scattered around Wat Po... it was said that within these Cheddys they contain the remains of monks and other seemingly scared pieces of Buddhism.

And I'll write more on our day of touring hopefully tomorrow morning (this evening to yall back in Pittsburgh) but it's 10:02 pm here...I'm tired... we gotta get up early... and I'm the only one still up right now and just a moment ago I got a little scared when i heard this noise just outside the window behind me that sounded like a cross between a monkey, a tiger, and bunny... a potentially very frightening creature! So I'm off!... more to come later so don't despair

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Okay.... as promised, I'll finish up my post now! and I'm gonna do a speedy job of it because Lynne wants to do her post in a few minutes... so I'm gonna give yall the less detailed version of the rest of our story, which will be a GREAT challenge for me.

ANYWAY, after seeing Wat Po we got back on the lil river bus, and went back to where we had started and then proceeded onto the Sky Train again to go a couple of exits in an effort to transport us fast to our lunch destination called The Loft. The Loft was a food court in the top level of one of many malls in Bangkok and required the scanning of a ticket in order to "purchase" food at several different vendors in this confined location.... it was pretty Americanized and it was a nice change from our typical Thai food.

Then we got on the Sky Train once more and traveled to our shopping destination. This place was as big as a mall, but laid out much like a flee market that involved a very confusing maze of different vendors selling anything from Buddha idols, to silk, to T-shirts, to purses, to wall hangings... they had it all! So this made it the best location by far to do our souvenir shopping. And the best part was that on the bottom floor (which is where i did all my shopping) we were able to bargain with the vendors... I was too timid to talk any of them down more than 50 baht (there are about 35 bahts in a US dollar) less than what they were asking for any given product, probably because I'm not too skilled in the art of bargaining and I didn't want to make any of them angry... course that's not the Thai way to get angry at all! they are really quite pleasant people... but Heidi, being the big time shopper that she is, was an expert at talking down prices!...i envy her skill at this even though it is pretty useless back in the States.

So once we got our shopping out of the way we stopped for dinner at a McDonalds, which isn't that different from the McDonalds back in the States except they don't have certain menu options such as the quarter pounder.... because they don't use pounds here! headed back to the Henry's humble abode, which again took a good bit of time due to the unrelenting rush hour traffic.... course traffic here is pretty crazy all the time and most of the missionaries with MTW do not have cars and if they do, they hardly ever drive just because the traffic is so nuts! BUT for it being our day off we were all exhausted from rushing around the entire day... yet we were not too exhausted to compare all our purchases once we got back...it was like Christmas time!---except we um, bought our own gifts.

So that was our day off... i guess i really didn't need to type so little detail (well not as much as i would usually include anyway) because i think lynne isn't actually going to blog tonight anyway. it probably doesn't matter due to the fact that today wasn't an exciting day at all... all we did was paint! But thank you for all the nice comments!.... me and Paul were in a competition to see who could get the most comments and I won big time! HAHA victory is MINE!

~Rachel