The Shot

It's a great feeling when you line up a shot in your head, point the camera, tune up whatever parameters you know (and some that you don't), snap away... and the resulting shot looks just as you had hoped! So far it's been a bit embarrassing to say that our point-and-shoot (steadily manned by Rachel)  has taken more memorable photos than our fancy ILC.  Here are a few of our favorite snapshots so far:

Silhouetted Temple View from Chao Phraya River At Sunset

Old Fort and City Wall At the Santichiprakan Park At Dusk

Window of Dilapidated Park Building Near BKK's Chinatown

Junk Cart Near Memorial Bridge in BKK

We're working on dumping a lot of our photos on to a Picassa web album and will send out a link when they're uploaded.

Musings 2.0

Apologies if the last post was a bit stunted - we were hindered by an uncooperative tablet and a shitty internet connection - we promise to be a lot more witty and insightful for the rest of the trip.  We have since left BKK for Ayuthaya on our track into Cambodia and Angkor Wat, but having spent the majority of our nascent trip in Thailand's capital, our thoughts mostly pertain to it.  We stayed for 2 nights around Banglamphu, BKK's backpacker ghetto, with Khao San road as its epicenter.  While landing here probably served as a good soft introduction into the region (e.g. lots of English speakers, WiFi spots, and western toilets), as anyone who has spent some time in Cancun can attest to, an overly-commercialized tourist location can get old very fast.  There are only so many overpriced restaurants serving watered-down thai food and tuk-tuk drivers accosting you for a ride that one can tolerate.  You can mitigate the chintziness a bit by staying on the near-by and quieter Rambutri road, which features fewer touts and a few good street food stands (including an awesome noodle stand - more on that in a minute).  Beyond our accomodation and ration seeking, we spent our 2 days in BKK touring around the city taking in the bustle, the people, and the unrelenting heat.  We scoped out some Wats (temples), Chinatown, and took a sunset boat ride on the Chao Phraya river.  We are currently in a guest house in Ayuthaya mustering the urge to venture out from the A/C to see Thailand's ancient capital .

Street food update:  We'll periodically recap our culinary highlights as we go along.  The current favorites are padthai with a fried egg for breakfast and a fried crepe-like batter filled with bananas and glazed with nutella. Pictures below:

Musings from Bangkok

Greetings,

Having spent the last 2.5 days in Bangkok with intermittent internet access, we figured it would be a good time to write a quick update.  Below are a few thoughts that have been perculating since we landed in SE Asia

1.  It took surprisingly not long to get here.  The flight over here consisted of 2 legs: Atlanta to Tokyo and Tokyo to BKK. The first leg was three-movies-and-a-xanax long and after a short layover in Japan, we took the 6-hour flight into Thailand. All in all it was a simple if not an easy process.

2.  It's really hot down here. We realize this statement is not wholly surprising, but suffice it to say we were not prepated for the level of perspiration experienced here. A quick shoutout to quick-dry underwear and goldbond for their valiant efforts in keeping us as comfortable as possible.

That's all for now, more to follow shortly.

Love,

R&A