.................had a bit of a rough start. Yesterday was our first day here and we went down for a short power nap at 4pm, only to wake up at midnight. At that point it was almost impossible to get back to sleep, so we were up until after 4am before sleeping for a couple more hours. Anyway, we caught the subway and then a taxi up to the zoo this morning. By the way, the subway system here puts Montreal, Toronto, and New York to shame. It's meticulously clean and full of stainless steel, glass, and stone. The zoo was alot of fun - there was such a huge collection of monkeys, lemurs, macaques to go along with your usual staples. We got up close and personal with a couple of big elephents (out loose in the public area with their trainer to bathe in the paddle-boat pond!) for some good pics and also had some fun with some Thai school children on a water game.

After the zoo, we hiked past the parliament buildings and the King's Palace to get to a docking station for the river-taxi. Basically, we paid 13 baht (about 40cents) each to get herded onto this boat full of people that made stops along the river at different points throughout Bangkok. We disembarked at China Town (yes, they have them here too) and made our way through the busy market streets. It was unbelievable...pedestrian sidestreets that were about 7 feet across lined with tables, foot traffic going both ways, and the occasional delivery motor bike forcing its way through the mess. There was so much stuff there...from boiled pork skins to bags to sandals to trinkets to solid gold jewelry sold by the gram...........................so now our feet ache, my back hurts, and we're going to bed...as soon as I check the hockey scores back home ;-)