A few busy days!

Just woke up at our hotel in Kanachaburi, finally have some free Internet, so figure it's time to catch up! It

How can I possibly sum up our first full day in Thailand.. It feels like 3 or more combined into one! To begin the hotel is incredible, including our breakfast spread every morning of Thai and English food. We started out with some tours and sight seeing of Buddhist temples. There are 31000 in Thailand, 411 in Bangkok alone as its 94% Buddhist and 4% Muslim population. We first went to temple of the Golden Buddha and then Wat Pho, the oldest temple in Bangkok with the reclining Buddha. These are HUGE! 5 1/2 tons. Learned a lot of amazingly interesting information, about the lives of monks, Buddhism tenets and more. An interesting tidbit is that the happy Buddha or Buddha with the big belly is not Buddha at all! He is an enlightened monk, he gained weight so that others would not confuse him for the actual Buddha. We started learning the different mudras or attitudes for the mains of Buddhas postures at home for the trip, really interesting! Like the reclining buddha is when he's on his right side, symbolizing how he dies on his right side when he entered nirvana.

At the temple of the Golden Buddha we saw some monks, made an offering of the incense and lotus flower and received a string bracelet from a monk that had been blessed. Supposed to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck.

After the temples we went to the outdoor market in the city center, crazy! It was massive and we got so incredibly lost! All I know is we started near other tourists and such and ended up inside in a maze, unable to guess our way out surrounded by pets for sale. Flying squirrels on leashes, meerkats, cats and dogs, turtles, cocks... And then came across a cock ring and an active cock right with some gambling! Only locals nearby and us looking extremely touristy with our cameras tried to get some footage before booking it the other direction!

That night we decided to opt out of some cabaret dinner show the tour had and went with another couple to a Muay Thai fight in town.. what an adventureeee. We took a cab to Lampini stadium and tried to buy our tickets.. Which for Thais is 1000 baht, for us they were charging 1600 baht! Turns out the cab driver was I on this scheme and had called to let them know we were coming and for everyone to not sell us tickets for under that price and all make money off of us! Pretty crazy, so once we get in we start to realize that our cabby called and that he got a percent of interest etc so crazy. Interesting fights though, incredibly uncomfortable for me. It starts off with about 13 year olds, then goes up to about 18 year olds. And these kids can be rough!! Super tough kids, a few left the ring in a daze, knocked out. Definitely some bruised ribs and cuts as well. The last fight was entertaining for sure, a French guy against a Thai! The French won, which was surprising!

Day 2 in Bangkok we slept in, spent time at the hotel at our pool and gym and got ahold of Jay in Bangkok. We had touched base before we left, but hadnt been able to contact him since entering Thailand due to our lack of Internet. Our hotel connected to a mall, some went into the mall to a local Starbucks and a younger Thai lent us his Internet for a moment so I could get his number and message my parents to let them know we arrived okay. The kid knew English, and is apparently going to New York Ina few weeks so Nic gave him his parents number and email in Case he ran into trouble in the states to repay him (hope that's okay Mr and Mrs Martino!! =] ) So we called jay from the hotel and he let us know that this would be a hard time to see him because he is currently a monk! He signed up for 10 days and was extending to 21, but this ended up working out perfectly for me because i had really wanted to sign up for cooking lessons while here, and when I told jay that he set it up for us to come over to his home and spend time with his family and learn to cook with his mom, aunt, sister, and grandma. A 40 minute cab ride later we meet jay and his dad and spend the rest of the afternoon and evening at his beautiful home!

This will be an experience a remember for me. Times like those are especially touching for me. just like Staying with Jenny's family in Costa Rica and just like seeing my family in Nicaragua.. Being able to feel at home in somewhere so distant in a culture so different from our own is just amazingly humbling and touching.

More to come later! Our bus just arrived for our hike to the waterfalls, and pictures to come tonight!