Never enough time - Scraping Laos and heading straight to Thailand

I realized in Vietnam that if 10 days was not enough time to see a country, 14 days surely wouldnt be enough time to see 2 countries. Michael was planning to meet me in Laos and spend 7 days in Laos and 7 days in Thailand, but we made a last minute decision to spend the entire time in Thailand. On my flight from Hanoi to Bangkok I picked up a copy of the condensed weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. In the Travel section they had a special on boutique hotels in Asia. As an avid Sunday travel section reader I thought "how cool would it be to actually go to one of the places listed in the travel section?!?!" So we cancelled our original reservations and stayed at the Heritage Baan Silom Hotel. The hotel was brand new and super trendy (the lobby is pictured). My favorite part of the place was that they served their fried eggs in the shape of hearts!
Our first night we walked around a bit and stopped for pad thai at a street vendor. Vietnamese food is amazing, but after 10 days I was craving something new and the noodles hit the spot. Funny story: towards the end of the meal a cockroach ran up my leg and made it all the way to my stomach before I realzied what was happening. With cat like reflexes I brushed it off and started to laugh ... laugh because it was the only thing I could do to keep from crying. The look on Michael's face was priceless! There are rates and cockroaches in NY, but they never actually attack you ... it's like my worst fear come alive. And if that wasn't enough of a culture shock in one evening for Michael a minute later a baby elephant walked by and we fed him sugar cane! The next day we took a water taxi up the river, then wandered around Bangkok (Michael LOVES the tuk-tuks, which are 3 wheeled scooter taxis) and saw a couple of wats and the Grand Palace/Emerald Buddha. Both were extremely ornate with gold leaf and brightly colored mosaic tiles, but it was way to effin hot and humid to really spend much time walking around in the sun. We had dinner with Michael's friend Paul who lives in Bangkok and at dinner I asked him to show me a Lady Boy. A Lady Boy is a man who looks exactly like a woman ... supposedly they take hormones from an early age and get breast implants and their adams apples removed. Fascinating! He took us to Pat Pong, which is kind of like the red light district of Bangkok (although prostitutes and lady boys are as ubquitous in Bangkok as taxis are in New York). It was ridiculously disgusting to see all these old fat white men walking hand in hand with these young Thai girls (um - or boys?). It just made my skin crawl. But at least I got to see my first Lady Boy and from then on Michael and I played the game "girl or Lady Boy?" Great fun for the whole family! The next day we had a midday flight to Krabi (a launching off point for some of the islands) so we just had a relaxing breakfast and kept to air conditioned buildings.