We are in Bangkok! We have finally made it to the sunshine. Its hot and humid and sweaty and stinky and I LOVE it. We are staying at a hotel tucked away on an alley just outside of the major backpacker area, so we have lots to walk around and look at. There are thousands of tourists staying in the main area, called Banglamphu, or more commonly, the backpacker ghetto. People from all over the world have come to soak up the sun, eat amazing streetfood, drink thai beer, buy bizarre goods at the market and explore this crazy city. The city is carved through with canals, kind of like Venice. Water taxis cruise the canals, which is nice becasue traffic on the roads in intense. Tuk-Tuks, which are like go carts, zip around on the freeways, as do semis, motorcycles and tricked out pickup trucks. Everything is colorful here, flowers in the trees, the buildings are painted bright colors, the stinky stray cats in the streets walk down the cobbled alleys chasing cockroaches, and even BATS. This place is crazy. There are tons of wats (thai temples) tucked away in the city, well be walking down an empty street and all the sudden there is a huge wat with ornate gold decorations, buddah statues, gardens for worship and monks, old and young, sporting shiny bald heads and orange robes. Its amazing to see.
We've been taking in as much thai food as the heat allows (its hot and humid so my appetite is like zero and the food is mostly hot and spicy, so its hard to eat sometimes, but SO DELICIOUS). We've been eating mostly from street vendors, they'll whip you up a heaping plate of pad thai noodles with chicken, veggies, egg and thai chilis in about 30 seconds for 30 baht (about one dollar). My favorite is the Tom Yum soup... a spicy broth made of coconut milk, lemongrass, ginger, and thai chili, loaded with veggies. Its amazing.I love it. Casey has developed an addicton to the pad thai which is so fresh it shames any american version. There are little thai ladies blendng fruit smoothies on most street corners, so I start my day with a mango smoothy in the early morning. Not a bad breakfast :) There are some weird foods too, like fried insects... which of course we've tried. Fried scorpion tastes like burnt popcorn, actually not that bad. We've adopted a sort of seista sleeping system, wake up early while its still kinda cool (like 80) stroll the streets, there are endless things to look at, grab some street eats and sit in the sun. There is no beach here, but we'll be at the beach soon enough I'm sure. Mid afternoon is the heat of the day and it gets DAMN hot, so we grab something cold to drink and pass out in our room for an hour or two, or find some shade in the city and write in our journals or play cribbage.
Today we have an interesting adventure ahead of us... were headed to the vietnamese embassy to arrange for our entry visas, it takes 3 or 4 days after you apply so sooner is better as bangkok is fun, but more than a week in this madness might be a bit much. The embassy is on the complete opposite side of town, with several options for travel: taxi, subway, skyrail, or longtail canal boat. With a sense of adventure were going to attempt the canal route, we'll see how it goes as we don't speak any thai, and it wil mean leaving the safety net of the backpacker area where most everyone speaks some english. Were game. Tonight were going to visit a few wats most likely, and maybe take in some muay thai (thai boxing) i'll let you know how it goes.
UPDATE: well... the Vietnamese Embassy was closed for a week to celebrate Chinese New Year, so our visas will have to wait. Thats alright, because we decided to head North to Chiang Mai before leaving Thailand (we'll be back in a month or so for some scuba beach bum action).
We did go see Muay Thai in Bangkok, which was incredible. We hired a tuk-tuk which drove us about 150 miles an hour to the stadium, just like in Mario Kart. We sat in the 3rd class seats with the locals, which was a riot as they were all betting on the matches, screaming, hand gestures, cheering. We got in on the action. Thai people are really friendly, and eager to practice English so we got a lot of hellos and welcomes. We had a blast betting (each other) on the matches while the crowd blared on around us. The fighting was pretty cool, not really my thing but Casey is a big fan.
We're now in Chiang Mai, which is a welcome change of pace from Bangkok. Much quieter, calmer, and hotter. We didn't know that we were flying in on the day of the Flower Festival, an annual event where thousands of people gather in the streets of Old Town to watch parades, shop at the market, eat street food, and sweat sweat sweat. There are more flowers than I've ever seen, so many bright beautiful colors, even the parade floats were made out of flowers! We rented a motorcycle today from our hostel and zipped around town, I even learned how to drive!! We visited a temple that is hidden way up on the hillside about town. It was beautiful, but I think riding along the windy jungle road on the way up there was the highlight. We're probably going to stay in Chiang Mai for a few more days before heading towards Laos. We were originally planning on going straight from Bangkok to Cambodia, but the plan is constantly evolving. We'll have to catch Cambodia on the way bach through. Lots of fun, maybe one of these days my tan will be worthy of showing off, but for now I remain the incredibly pale MeGook. CIAO
