2 Kufsteinis in Bangkok

Udo arrived, Udo arrived.
So after chatting through more than half the night it takes us quite a while to wake up in the morning and get our groove on.
We head out after noon and first stop is the Big C's food court for some Thai. Most of the time I get lucky with my point and pick some random food. This time the food itself seemed delicious but after the first bite I couldn't continue eating my supersuperspicy (unintented) fried rice, since all my taste buds had died off. After tons of coke and iced teas I start getting some sensation again in my nerves and eat something more safe, like Gyoza. Udo gets more lucky with his Seafood Soup and Noodles.
We are aiming to find the nearest subway stop. Nearest, is quite a wide term, since we walk a felt hours. In fact it may have been a good 30 minutes but in midday heat, next to crazy traffic it's a whole different story.
The Metro is quite the same than in other Asian cities, like HongKong, Beijing and Shanghai. Very modern, clean and well airconditioned with lots of security checkpoints. Easy to navigate as the announcements are all in Thai and English. Unfortunately there's only one subway line in Bangkok, so it doesn't get you nearly everywhere you want to go.
We arrive at Hua Lamphong mid afternoon. To late to go see the Grand Palace or most of the temples since they close between 3 and 5pm already. So we decide to take a walk through Chinatown. While taking a wrong turn in the rain we meet a real, real friendly Thai gentleman. Turns out he works at The Oriental, one of the most luxurious hotels in Bangkok, hence his good english, and I guess friendly demeanour. He gives us some tips on what to do which we promptly follow.
Instead of walking through shopping crazed Chinatown we take a 2 hour private longtail boat tour on the Chao Phraya river and some sidearms, we haggle down to 2200 Baht for both of us, not a good job, but I am too lazy to bargain more. Our boatman Ling is a bit crazy but quite fun, shouting out our name like every 15 seconds I guess just to be sure to remember them. We go up and down the Chao Phraya into some sidearmes by some thousands of houses and hundreds of temples. All in all Bangkok should have 422 temples, so you gonna have a hard time picking your favorite one. It's amazing how Villas and mansions are next to shantytowns and rundown buildings. The different worlds are really next door to each other. It's really relaxing, I wonder how it would be to live here and take a jetski or small private boat to work each day. Sit by the little breeze that comes in from the river that makes the heat a bit more bearable. There's families and children by the riverside waving and blowing us kisses, damn that's soooo sweet. It's a lovely way to be welcomed to Bangkok. Our boatman stops at the Snake Farm. Another tourist trap, since we are already here we pay the 150 Baht entrance and get to see a snake show where guys play with venomous snake, which is not too bad. Quite entertainig and scary at some points. There's a zoo attached to it too, which is really sad. All the animals appear half dead, I hope it's just the heat, and unhappy. I am kind of sad to have supported this zoo with my money. There's definitely better places where the animals could be.
We continue the boat trip to Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, for a short photo stop. It looks magnificent, we will definitely be back here to climb up and see it again.
The longtail boat tour ends, as we wanted, in Chinatown. Getting out of the boat is quite an adventure. The platform is over a meter higher, and moving with the river up an down. Nowhere to hold, nowhere to stand, I already saw myself lying in the river, Luckily no such thing happenend and we also exited the boat unscathed.
Welcome to Chinatown! Like any other Chinatown, there's markets, food stalls, and everything to buy you need and don't need. I get some Shumai and some kind of pancakes filled with all sorts of stuff, which we share. The green and yellow filling are absolutely amazing and taste excellent, after all it was made right before our eyes, the brown filling taste something like bean curd, can't recommend that. But everything else... sooo yummy.
We walk for seeming hours through the streets and markets of Chinatown, passing by Little India as well. Udo out of the blue decides to get a haircut, which ends up looking fantastic for only 120 B. Seeing that we don't speak Thai and the hairdresser doesn't speak English, wow, great result.
Following the road to what seems nowhere, we've completely lost track of our whereabouts we get to a Flower Market that stretches for blocks on ends. All kinds of flowers, orchids, flowery decorations, garlands and whatever else you can imagine is on display here. A bunch of roses runs for less than one rose back home. And the smell.... the first time you actually really WANT to smell this city. They should have flower markets more scattered around rather than so condensed. After looking around for some time we grab some more street food, one better than the other, grab some beer and a cab back.
We planned on having an early night in, since we start early in the morning for the Grand Palace and other sights but checking... it's past 2 am and there's still some beer left...
Pictures should be up some time soon. 
By the way, we like Chang beer better than Leo. Night all