Hello from BKK!
 

Hello everyone, we are safely here in the land of smiles!!!!!!! It is so awesome! First, thanks go out to Bob for the Marriott! It is so nice, and they upgraded us to the suite becs its our honeymoon! The resort is more than i hoped for! I also went to see jack to get my suit made, I had been e mailing him for 2 months and he is great, but he went to get married in India and now his cousin is there, and NOT VERY NICE! anyway, its a good price for a great suit! We went to a baptist church on soi 2 and it was just like home! Getting around is much easier than I thought it would be, thanks to everyone here for the help, we have had no problems at all, and my wife thinks it great that i planned this whole trip with your help! Well now we are off to ko chang for a week of diving! Talk to you all later, Jeffrey and April Dunlap

P.S. I got sick and the doctor came to the hotel, and it was only $60!!!!!! Try getting that in the states!

hi travelduo...
glad you made it safe and sound. we too took bobs advice and stayed at the marriott on the river. loved it...loved the breakfast buffett...and quietness of the hotel.
can't wait to hear about your travels and your
dive trip. i planned 4 days of diving , then hurt my knee in sukhotthai and had to cancel my dives. we also wanted to dive
koh tao but a storm blew thru and that didnt happen either. next year...we will dive for sure.
keep up the postings....

i'm so happy that you love the hotel...i can't wait to get back there...sorry jack was away still ...you would like him....i have sent him a wedding present from a shop across the river...hope he gets it...

if you are over at the sheraton, gpanda---aka andrew levine...is there look him up for a fodors reunion...

bob

Well the diving here in ko chang isnt that great:( mst of the coral is dead and it has been windy! our place at barali is awesome tho! We were very surprised that there isnt very many americans here in Thailand at all! We will tell you all about everything when we get home! Tomorrow is Loy Krahtong and that should be fun! Jeffrey and April

travelduo, Have seen some brief posts since your return. You mentioned that getting around BKK was easier than expected. I see you used Julie's Taxi for airport pick-up. How was she? Did you use her for driving or sightseeing in BKK? Did you use guides? Would love to know more since we're planning for trip in January and can't make up our minds as to whether we should arrange for driver (Ratt or Julie?) and/or guides. Any help would be appreciated! You're no longer newbies! Thanks.

Hi CFW, Julie was great! We actually never had julie as the driver, it was a different guy each time. We used them for the trips to and from the airport( 4 times all together!) and that was ther best help! It was wonderful coming off that 22 hour flight on the other side of the world and seeing your name(mispelled) on a big card and knowing that we didnt have to mess with trying to find someone when we got there! She charged us B 600 for the airport trip and that included the expressway charge. They were always on time, but the one complaint that we had was that some of the drivers didnt speak English like she says they do. I actully speak Thai better than some of them. But on the Day that it really mattered, when we went to the floating market, we had the best guy in all of Thailand that julie sent to take us! His name was Udom and his English was great and was just a wonderful stand out guy! Most of the time we did everything else o our own! Rode the skytrain, took the taxis, and even the tuk tuk once. All of this I thought was going to be a big deal for us because we live in the country and there is no traffic and no subway and no taxis! All the info that I got from Bob and the other people on here really helped a ton! i was very scared before we left that maybe someone didnt get our e mail or someone would forget to get us, but everything went PERFECT! I hope yours does also! Let me know if there is anything else! Jeffrey

Hello Bob and all who have stayed at Marriott[river]. We are going for 3 nights in Feb and I wondered how to get to sky train from hotel,it all sounds a bit daunting but I suppose everyone else manages it. Thanks Mary

i thought it would be a horribel experience the first time also, but it is sooooooo easy! the boat from the hotel takes you right to the base of the station, when you get off the dock from the boat, take a right and head pass the people sleeping on the benches to the stairs and just walk up to the place where you get your tickets. IF you buy the one day pass like we did the first time you can get that from the hotel for B100 and then when u get to the skytrain station give it to the guy behind the glass who will activate it for you. I had NEVER even ridden on a subway before and it turned out to be soooo easy!

travel duo has it right...it is very easy and a pass is a good savings if you plan to use it 3 or 4 times in a day...a 3 day pass is good too...

I'm enjoying reading your postings!
Wondered if you thought the floating market trip was good and how much it cost for the day with the driver/guide?
We're in Bangkok for 5 days and are wondering whether to hire a driver and use them for what parts?
Thanks

The floating market is a toss up! on the one hand it has all the tourist crap that you can buy anywhere in bkk, but on the other, it is cool to be in the boat with the guy paddling for you and to see some of the older Thai women selling stuff from their boats. Th eoddest part was if you just glanced at someones little store area, they have this huge hook that they reach out and pull your boat over with! Very odd! If you do go make sure that you leave VERY EARLY! we got there just when everything opened and it was cool, but by the time we left it was just full of long tail boats and people everywhere! if you give me your e mail i can send you some pics of what it was like before and after all the people got there! If you do go also make sure that you get the small boat with a guy to paddle for you! that part was B300 each. The whole trip was B2000 thru julie and that was for up to 10 hours! We also went to the handicraft place down the street and that was fun. I was going to buy this huge elephant that I thought was B4000 which is like $100 but it turned out to be the only thing in BKK that was priced in US $$$$$ so it was $4000, needless to say I had to pass, but it was very cool to see how they make all the things that you see sold all over! Be aware that for the last 30 before you get to the market its on a dirt road that isnt very smooth! The best part of the trip for us was when Udom took us to this special place he goes to a few times a week to take care of some monkeys that live in the area! We stayed there for about an hour while he told us about them and got to feed them. They are wild monkeys so i am not sure if feeding them was the best idea, but the monkeys seemed to love the peanuts we bought from the floating market that we thought were gross! Not like peanuts from the US! Anyway, part of the trip that Julie taxi does is go to some elephant show in that area also, but we didnt go becs we had other things to do:) the only other thing we had a guide for was the grand palace, and i dont think we could of dont it without one. But we also found out that we are NOT palace and wat kind of people because after that I dont think we will ever need to see another one! BTW my wife bought a pair of jeans in MBK and when she got home this girl at work had the exact same jeans on, my wife paid $10 and the girl paid $150 in the US for the exact same thing!

hi travelduo...
glad you have a great time in bkk...
we also loved the marriott...did you
go to any of the markets (weekend and nite markets).
what other things were outstanding...??
we are planning our next trip for october 2005.

Jeffrey, What guide did you use for the Grand Palace ? Did you visit Wat Po at the same time? Did you take the boat from the Marriott to get there or did you use Julie's taxi? Why do you think a guide is important for the Grand Palace/Wat Po? Because of difficulty in getting there or because of the information they provided about what you saw & Buddhism?

Hey Divediva! the Marriott was Awesome! I have never stayed st anything like it before, even when we went out of the country before its never been in a place like this and the price was outstanding also! We went to THE weekend market, but it was the day after we got there and my body wasnt ready for that yet, my wife on the other hand slept 20 of the 22 hours of our flight so she was up to it! The market was SOOOOOO huge! I am not sure how we made it back to teh hotel with all the stuff we bought! I shld of taken the advice I saw on here to take take an empty suitcase from home because you will need it to take home all the stuff! I tried to get my wife to let me buy this snake from the market, the guy showed me how to smuggle it back into the US in my pocket!!!!!!!! OFC i would never do that but it was great to see my wifes reaction when i asked! We also went to the night market in Patpong, which is something that you HAVE to do. We walked the whole entire thing, then at the end took a tuk tuk for B10 back to the sala dang station, and that was the best B10 I spent while we were there! It was weird to see the 7 foot tall ladyboy in Patpong! I also loved going to the different shopping malls just because they are so different than here in the states. When we were walking on the bridge from the skytrain to MBK there were about 15 poeple selling things on the bridge, that is until the cops came and swept the place!!!!!! That was about the only time I got a little scared, just because the cops were taking the people that were buying the stuff not only the sellers!
Now for the Grand Palace, we actually ran into a guy named Nui on the skytrain that works for Destination Asia, anf for pretty cheap he took us on his day off, he had a driver for us and we just met him in the mall. The boat from the Marriott ONLY goes to the skytrain area and back, so if you dont have a guide you will have to take a taxi there i suppose. We needed the guide because we could of never gotten there ourselves and because even if we did, we would of NEVER understood what anything was once we got inside! It is HUGE, and there is sooooooooooo much to try to take in, that we had to have Nui there to help us thru it! He explained all the murals and what they represented and also helped us understand a bit more about the Buddist traditions. I still have his info if you would like it. There is a lot you can do without a guide but this is one thing that at least the first time I think that you should have someone with you. We didnt go to Wat Po, they actually came to our hotel!!!!!!!!! That was a great experience itself! Its so fun talking about what happened while we were there, it makes me feel like we are back there now!

I agree with Travelduo about the reasons for using a guide at the Grand Palace (as well as elsewhere in BKK) and have a guide recommendation for anyone who is interested. I found her via this message board a few months ago. Her name is Tan and she speaks excellent English. She is freelance, and will customize your day however you wish. She can hire a car/driver to help with transport, or if you prefer (as we did) you can use public transport such as taxis or the river ferries to get around. We thought her rates were extremely reasonable and our 2 days with her were completely stress free. If you'd like her contact info please email me at [email protected].