Hanging out at Kamala Bay in Thailand. Busy day: breakfast at the hotel, walk the length of the beach and back, stroll through the little town and window shop, swim at the pool, drink lemonade, swim in the ocean, have some lunch. See? Vacationing can be hard work.

Here are some pics from last night.

Our room is the upper right hand balcony of the right side bungalow.

The view from our dinner table.

Sunset.

Internet here is kind of iffy so I probably won't be posting too much. We arrived at Phuket about midday and settled into our hotel. It's nice but not what I'd call top-notch. We look out at the ocean - beautiful, although obstructed view. We swam in the ocean and one of the seven pools and watched the sun set over the water. The stars are now out and it's time to lay back and soak in the sea breezes.

I'll preface this blog with the admission that we've decided our stay in Bangkok will be about 12 hours too long. By the end of this morning's excursion we were pretty much done with big city vacationing. I'm ready to be out of the noise, heat, smell and crowds. It's time to go to the beach.

With that said, let me tell you about our day. We felt like we had one more temple visit in us so we headed off once again, past the Grand Palace and Wat Pho. We were looking for the ferry to take us across the river to Wat Arun, the Dawn Temple, but ended up one pier south of the one we wanted. A friendly gentleman informed us that the temple was closed until noon because the royal family had spent the night there and he offered to take us to a nearby temple until Wat Arun opened. Friendly, my ass. We have learned very quickly that there are very few friendly gentlemen here but plenty of swindlers. We kindly said no thank you and found the right ferry on our own.

For 6 baht (30 baht to $1, you do the math) we got a 5 minute ride to a gorgeous little temple along the river. It's in the process of getting renovated which was cool to see because of the contrast between old and new. The buildings are decorated with mosaic tiles, some of which looked like Chinese pottery.

Even the flowers along the street were beautiful.

By the time we started back to the hotel the heat index was about 115 degrees so we made a couple of stops for iced coffee, fresh mango and lunch to keep our strength up. This vacationing is hard work, after all.

For the afternoon we spent a lovely three hours in our air conditioned hotel room watching a delayed broadcast of the Red Sox pounding the Phillies for the season's opening day. A definite highlight of our day.

A couple of lowlights: When I tried practicing a couple of simple yoga moves I started the room spinning. Just when I think I'm almost recovered from my accident some stupid little symptom will pop back up. Bummer. Also, a taxi tried to run us over on our way to dinner. I may have called the driver a few unpleasant names after he screeched to a stop just short of impact. Definitely time to go to the beach.

Monday in Bangkok, continued.

After our trip to Wat Pho we hopped onto a tuk tuk to get to the other side of the city. The tuk tuks here look like they're built onto little tiny three-wheeled truck beds. The tuk tuks in Siem Reap, which we never drove in, are more like carts hooked onto the back of motorcycles. I guess that makes the ones here a bit safer but it was still terrifying driving through the Bangkok traffic. At least you can't get up much speed as you swerve in between all the other crazy drivers.

Our driver took us to the Jim Thompson House. Jim Thompson was an American who was stationed in Thailand at the end of WWII and decided to stay after the war ended. He is credited with reviving the Thai silk industry in the 1950's, in part by supplying all the silk fabric used in the movie "The King and I." He went to Malaysia for vacation when he was 61 years, went for a walk, and was never heard from again.

He left behind a beautiful teak house in Bangkok that is now a museum, restaurant and gift shop.

You could try your hand at spinning the silk, as this man did.

Even the hook on the back of the bathroom door was beautiful.

Over the canal there's a small neighborhood that was once home to a thriving weaving community. It now has just two small studios but we managed to find one of them by wandering around in the little warren of alleyways. The proprietor was very happy to show us around, including where one lone loom was being used by a weaver who graciously let me take a video of her.

The owner of the studio had a picture of himself as a young man with Jim Thompson. He was happy to pose for a picture for me.

I couldn't buy any silk thread but we did buy a beautiful piece of fabric to remind us of a pretty special experience.

From there we decided to walk back to our hotel. In retrospect we may have done better finding a taxi or tuk tuk. We didn't have a great map and took a few wrong turns before we made it back to the hotel two hours later. That kind of walking wouldn't have been so draining if it hadn't been in the high 90's. Fortunately we had the pool and fruit smoothies to help us cool off.

This morning we set out to find the Grand Palace and Wat Pho, two important landmarks in the heart of Bankok and within walking distance to the hotel. The Grand Palace was, until recently, the residence of the king of Thailand. It covers a large area and is comprised of quite a few separate buildings.

You can't see them in this picture (because they're all dutifully staying off the grass) but the place was packed with tourists. Lee borrowed the required pants so that we could tour the palace without offending anyone with his exposed knees. (I had worn long pants and a shirt that covered my shoulders.) There were plenty of people who needed to borrow the necessary clothes but they're very generous in only asking for a deposit that they give back to you when you give the clothes back. When we were at Angkor Wat I had to buy a pair of pants (for all of $4) in order to be allowed into one of the temples.

Anyway, once we were appropriately clothed we fought our way to the main entrance and changed our minds about going in. It was really crowded with groups pouring out of tour buses and they were not the friendly groups of tourists who are enjoying the day and the sites. These people seemed relentless in their tourism. Do not get in the way of a flag-toting tour guide and his flock, let me tell you.

Lee returned his pants and we escaped the palace grounds. By then it was about 9:00 and the temperature had wandered into the 90 degree range. We were pleasantly surprised to come inside the walls of Wat Pho (official name: Wat Phra Chettuphon Wimon Mangkhlaram Ratchaworamahawihan) and found a relatively quiet and peaceful, shady little oasis.

Inside one of the main buildings was one of the largest Buddhas in the world, the 160 feet long reclining Buddha.

His feet are the most amazing inlay of mother-of-pearl.

There are also over a thousand smaller Buddhas on display throughout the complex. The whole place was like a fairy land with spires and mosaics and gold leaf and glitter. Ir was lovely to see but after awhile you realize you've had enough of the over-the-top glitz.

We're off to dinner now so I'll tell you about the second half of our day another time. (Warning: It includes another trip to a weaving studio.)

We have arrived in Bangkok. It's only an hour-long flight from Siem Reap but the weather is a bit more humid. When I checked the temperature around 3:00 it was 96 degrees with a heat index of 106. Our hotel has a little swimming pool, however, and the water was actually refreshing. Lee rigged me a new splint to wear in the pool that I can get completely wet and then I change back into the one the doctor gave me. By then it's had a chance to dry out a bit from all the sweat. (Did I mention it's really hot around here?) My ribs hurt when I try to swim at all but it's really nice to try.

For dinner we walked over to Bangkok's version of Pub Street, Khao San Road. It's lined with shops, bars, restaurants and cheap hotels. It seemed a bit seedier with a younger crowd than what we saw in Siem Reap but we had an excellent meal and plan to go back tomorrow to one of the nearby streets that seemed just a little more upscale.

Warning: this post is exclusively about weaving.

Yesterday we visited a weaving studio that's been set up to train young people in the art of producing, spinning, dying and weaving silk. From moth to fabric, here are all the steps.

These are the mulberry bushes that the caterpillars eat. The leaves are picked and brought into the cocoonerie.

They're hard to see, but the male and female moths are placed together on top of these pieces of paper where they mate, lay the eggs and die. The little black dots on the paper are baby caterpillars.

The caterpillars eat the mulberry leaves for a couple of weeks and then form yellow cocoons (you can see the cocoons in the picture with the moths). About 20% of the cocoons are saved out for the moths to mature and mate. The remaining 80% are boiled, steamed or left out in the sun to kill the pupa. If they are allowed to hatch they chew through the cocoon and cut the silk threads into too small of pieces. If you are a true vegan you do not wear silk because the animal dies in the process of making it.

Next step is the spinning. The cocoons are floating in water and are unraveled 3 or 4 at a time as they are spun into thread. The thread from one cocoon is almost too thin to see.

After its spun the thread is washed and dyed. This studio uses only vegetable (no chemical) dyes.

Then the looms are warped and the weaving begins.

My only disappointment was that they only sell the finished fabric. I couldn't buy any cones of thread. Hopefully I'll have more luck with that in Thailand.