Day 23, near Bangkok: Rhymes with “Way”.

(Posted by Andrew about the events of Jan 3; outside Bangkok, Thailand.)

Another 5AM wake-up call. I cannot wait to get back to North America to get a proper grind-drip coffee.

We started our tour with a couple from Australia, the husband of which seemed to be doing a bad Crocodile Dundee impression (kids, ask your parents). He even had the hat and greeted me with a loud “G'day, mate!” that Paul Hogan would have told him to tone down. I would have responded with “Take off, hoser!” (once again: kids, ask your parents) but I doubt he would have gotten the reference. We chatted up a storm with them but sadly they turned out to be on a different tour than us and before we left the city they were exchanged for a dour couple from the UK and an ambiguously gay couple from California. (As with our Patagonian holiday trip last year, we're encountering a statistically significant number of gay people on this journey. I'm sticking with my theory that if your family isn't altogether comfortable with your sexual orientation, the holidays make a good time to strike out on a long distance vacation.)

First stop was the floating markets of <>. First we toured around the canals in a small boat to see the local homes of those who live on this “Venice of the Orient”, then were dropped off at the market itself.

Fun to see, but we spent the whole hour there disappointing vendors by not purchasing a single thing. We don't buy much for knick-knacks or gifts anyway (hope nobody at home is expecting anything) and after three weeks on the road we've got what we need.

After that it was off for a bit of historical tourism to see the Bridge over River Kwai, along with a few supporting museums and cemeteries. Our guide repeatedly pointed out that the river name was properly pronounced to rhyme with “way”, not “why”, and that the latter pronunciation was introduced by the movie to make the title more palatable for English-speaking audiences. (“Hollywood,” he excitedly exclaimed, “they make aaaaaanything possible!” At least, that's what I think he said.) He also warned us several times that the bridge in the movie was in Sri Lanka and used because it was more dramatic looking than the real one, as he's had to deal with disappointed tourists in the past.

After that we had a looooooong drive back to Bangkok (almost four hours, though it only seemed to take about 90 minutes to get out there) so we were too tired and ratty to experience Bangkok by night.