Bangkok

After a long trip, we made it to the hotel last night around 1am Bangkok time. Went to bed, got up and headed out to the Grand Palace to see the sights. Within 15 minutes, the locals had already tried out all the scams on us...Our taxi driver was particularly annoying and tried to "help us out" by avoiding traffic and dropping us off for 200 baht at a boat that would take us to the palace and then tried to "help us out" by turning off the meter and just charging us a flat rate of 250 baht. We declined and had to listen to him whine about the traffic all the way to the Grand Palace where we charged the meter rate of only 90 baht... Anyway, the Grand Palace was amazing and we took way too many pictures. We saw the Emerald Buddha (made of jade) and went to the Wat with the Reclining Buddha which was breathtaking in its enormousness. We went to the outdoor markets and were overwhelmed with the multitudes of smelly dried fish for sale. We didn't buy any - nasty! Then we took a long boat tour of the canals and the floating market. All in all, the historical aspects of Bangkok are amazing but the rest of it is pretty polluted and overcrowded. We're excited to check out Chang Mai for the next few days which is supposed to be a beautiful walled city with far fewer people than Bangkok.