The Big Mango

Bangkok, Thailand - We arrived by train in Bangkok this afternoon from Phitsanulok. We had taken a train to Phitsanulok from Chiang Mai a couple of days ago with the intention of seeing the historical ruins at Sukhothai about an hour away from Phitsanulok but both of us are going through a bit of temple fatigue so we bagged that plan. That coupled with the fact that I have had "Thailand Tummy" the last 4 days it wasn't hard to skip Sukhothai.

It is great to be in Bangkok aka The Big Mango, we found a nice little boutique hotel that just opened a month ago so we've gotten a great "Grand Opening" rate. We will be here about 5 days. The plan is to get our Indonesian visas here and also go see a movie. We haven't seen a movie in ages and Bangkok has lots of first run movies in english.

From here we may go to Kanchanburi which was made famous in the movie "Bridge on the River Kwai" and is the site of the "Death Railway" built by Allied prisoners in WW2 but it seems like a bit of a slog and we are both feeling pretty lazy these days so we'll see...

The other more likely option is to head down to the Thai islands for a few weeks. We are thinking that we might do our diving certification while we are here. Betsy has never dived and I actually got certified about 10 years ago but then only dived a couple of times after that.

It seems a shame to come to some of the best diving areas in the world and not take advantage of it. So if we do that we will head to Ko Tao an island in the Gulf of Thailand that grants more diving certifications each year than anywhere in the world except Cairns, Australia.

Our Thai visas are good until July 26th so we have plenty of time left to explore the country.