A day on Thai-time

Today we had planed to go to the Grand Palace and we choose to walk because it is not too far away. On the way we were had by our first scam. A woman and a guy came up to us and started talking then poured corn seed in our hands to feed the pigeons. it was so sly and we tried to walk away but no chance. As soon as we tried to leave and the pigeons were gone they demanded 150 bhat each for a few small bags of corn! That is like $3 american and far too expensive considering most small meals are 20-40 bhat. I went to dgive him 5 bhat and he got so mad when we walked away he threw it on the ground...i didn't look back to see him pick it up again. We were scamed but Dan reluctantly gave them 40 bhat---they were not happy but too bad. We made it too the Grand Palace but by the time that we got there it was almost closed so we decided to take the water Taxi to Chinatown. This is a very interesting, cheap and fast way to travel. Here I had my first experience with a crouching toilet---confusing but i figured it out. We then got shoddy directions to the oldest Chinese temple but never did make it there--or find it for that matter. We ended up at the Golden Buddha Wat but just as it closed. However an Indian man made me a delicious roti-type bread/crape thing with egg, sugar, banana and condensed milk mmmmmmm that was sooo good. So we wondered around trying to find the next water taxi port but instead got quite lost. The bad news was that it was getting dark in an unknown part of the city, the good news was that we were able to see the real Bangkok, where the people live and eat, it was a bit scary but very interesting. It was grungy but not dirty, crowded but not claustrophobic. and the people eventually guided us to the way we needed. On the river taxi home we saw these really cool lit up boat floats and now we had planned to go to Patpong ( the red-light district) to check out what that is all about but it's already quite late and we haven't eaten in a while so maybe we will not quite make it there either. This brings me to explain that today we were on Thai-time. Apparently the Thais have a very lax view of deadlines and appointments, so if they say they will meet you at 1:00 you can expect them after 2. So today we were on Thai-time and were too late for pretty much everything... oh well at least we have tomarrow. We did buy an alarm clock after all.