White guy Johnny Boy Yoga dude with Dreads.

I cut off the pant legs to my Levi's. Making some badass jean shorts. Or jorts. But after talking with our local guide,"So", he told us that o visit the temples you can't be wearing shorts or tank tops. I went across the street and bought a pair of cotton pants, which came with a sweet cotton shirt for what amounts to $7 US.  It was nice getting out of my other clothes afterward, which I decided to do after my Thai style massage. Later that evening I washed all my clothes in the sink and set them to dry in the hotel room, which they did by the time we saw all the temples the next day. For the time being I will hold onto both sets of clothes, but casting shit aside while walking the Fannytrekker's trail is sometimes necessary.

Our guide So drove us around in his tuk tuk all morning to the giant Buddha,the Golden Mount, the Marble temple, and we grabbed some street food for $3 for two people. Fucking bomb too. We managed to see enough Buddha statues that it kinda blends together. More interesting to me than the statues and art was observing the devout Buddhists perform their rituals, buying flowers, incense, and applying gold leaf to the statues. There are lots of alm donations to the various monk statues and Buddha shrines. The parishioners varied from Thai or other south East Asian ethnicities, to Japanese, and various white guy with dreadlocks yoga dudes. Hitting the gongs and bells was fun for the whole family. At the first gong I laid a mallet into I was very respectful with it. Later at the Golden Mount when kids were just wailing away on rows of bells along the pathways, I realized it doesn't always need to be taken so seriously. I mean, is anyone taking white guy Johnny Boy and his dreadlocks seriously? (Plus white guy dreads was often wearing short shorts, tank top, and had filthy feet when he'd take his sandals off. I mean fuck, this Fannytrekker actually bought pants when his 4 day old Levi's were barely soiled.)

The other big thing that happened today was our guide driving us to Tailor shops. Bangkok has lots of Indian owned Tailors all over town. Like one every block. You can get a custom tailored suit in any style, cut, or fabric you want. But that's not the point of what happened. We didn't ask to go to some tailor shops. We went there as a favor to our guide because he gets a kick back as a promoter for these shops. He got 5 liters of propane (tuk tuks are run on propane which is much cheaper than gasoline) from each shop. It was cool if us to do it, and it was cool to see the tailor shops, but it was even cooler that he didn't charger us any extra money above the 1000 baht ($30) we gave him the first day. He also took us to the travel agency that hooked us up with trips around Thailand. So I think among all our purchase/participation we've done with him, he's making out pretty good. Kind of a scratch our back we scratch yours.