Day 1: Wednesday, April 12 Roll over the underlined links in order to see an image. Our first stop on our journey was Bangkok's Grand Palace - it was absolutely magnificent. The temperature was over 100 and it was unbearably hot, but we had to wear long pants and long sleeved shirts to visit the temples. After the Royal Palace, we did a private boat tour along the river and canals through the city, and got a glimpse of some of the older parts of the city along the waterways. Most of the houses were very old and dilapidated, built on now-rotting stilts that look like they could topple into the water at any moment. Interspersed between these older houses were a few more modern homes, which didn't look like they belonged. At one spot, we bought bread from a man and fed a swarm of catfish. After the boat tour, we went for traditional Thai massages. Thai massage is described as almost like yoga - like having yoga done TO you. They were stretching and pulling on us, and one apparent objective of the massage was to crack or pop as many of our joints as possible (including each individual toe!) After the massages, we hit a shopping mall to get some air-conditioning and check out some of the local handicrafts and artwork so that we would have a better idea of the types of things to look for at the floating market, which we are visiting tomorrow. We had dinner tonight at a big hotel, which offered all kinds of food. After dinner we went to one of the night markets, where we had our first night market shopping experience and also had a view of some of Bangkok's many sex clubs. In the middle of all of this, people were already getting ready for the next day's New Year's celebrations - throwing water at each other! NEXT ---