11-14 (Tuesday)

We stumbled off the train with all our stuff in a complete fog. We may have been out of it but the city was already abuzz with activity. We turned down offers to take us to the hotel because the Internet said it was within walking distance of the station. That was true but not if you were pulling two broken down, worn out suitcases. We ended up taking a tuk tuk. We arrived before any of the hotel staff was awake. Thank goodness the doors were unlocked so we went in and made ourselves at home on the lobby furniture. It wasn't long before a man came through the lobby and saw us. He must have been a manager because he woke up one of the clerks and they began checking us in. Even thought it was only 5:30 in the morning he let us go to our room which was very nice. We crashed for several hours then got up and walked down the street to find some lunch. The place where we ate was very small but clean. There were two policemen eating there. One was in uniform and the other one was undercover. The undercover one said he had been to Orlando years ago for police training with the DEA. His English was good enough that we knew what he was saying. We walked around the town a bit. The sun wasn't shining so it was much cooler than Bali. We walked back to the train station and bought our return to Bangkok - again we have seats but it doesn't matter because we will be traveling during the day.

Tonight we went to eat at a new place we discovered this afternoon. As we approached the corner we heard a loud racket. We thought maybe it was locus but no . . . it turned out to be 100's of birds perched in trees, on power wires and on building tops on all four corners of the street. We tried to stay away from them and undercover for fear of bird flu. We made it to the restaurant and had a nice meal. We walked back towards the birds, past them and to the Night Bazaar. It didn't compare to Chaing Mai but we had fun walking along looking at things. Before we left there we got a foot massage. When we got back to the hotel we did laundry and fell in bed.