First Impressions

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January 16th 2009

Published: February 3rd 2009

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enlightenedtravels

Bangkok, Thailand

Koh San Road

Bangkok smells. Koh San Road is one of the main streets and it is beyond overwhelming. Walking down the street at night is an experience for all of the senses. The smells range from garbage and feces to fish, chicken and fresh fruit to inscence. The colors are vibrant and beautiful. The people are lovely and terribly sad at the same time. The amount of stray cats and dogs is outrageous and it breaks my heart to see the animals digging in the trash and the people begging. Koh San Road is so busy and as you walk down the street past cart after cart of foods (meats, pad thai, fresh fruit, fried maggets, cockroaches, crickets, banana pancakes, fruit shakes and on and on) you get used to dealing with the overwhelming stenches and begin to try and taste the exotic and delicious and unbelievably cheap meals surrounding you.

We stayed a street away from Koh San Road and spent our days riding around in tuk tuks to see the sights, shopping and eating quite often. Bangkok is definitely a party city and a couple days was more than enough!

It has not taken long to get used to

Bangkok, Thailand

One of the many temples our tuk-tuk driver took us to in Bangkok.

a random cat or dog laying at your back while you sit on the floor and eat or the abundance of flys fluttering around my head at every meal and the dirtiness of the bathrooms. All bathrooms consist of a toilet or squat hole and a faucet coming out of the wall with a bucket and scoop and sometimes there's also a trash bin. The concept is to flush with the water in the bucket and always discard toilet paper in the bin. Most bathrooms do not have toilet paper in them, so I was very quick to learn to always have some on me. The boys fare a bit better with the toilet situation in this country, but I, sick as it is, enjoy the uniqueness and sometimes shocking situation before me and have learned that hand sanitizer and baby wipes are two of my bestfriends!

So after a few days of Bangkok, we've made our way to a little island south of Cambodia, but still part of Thailand, called Koh Chang. It's been such a lovely change from Bangkok. It's much warmer here and we're living in a bungalow on the beach. The stray animals here do

Bangkok, Thailand

Stray cat eating some fish remains in an alley off Koh San Road.

much better than the ones in Bangkok, but the amount of them is still a bit appalling. Our bunglow consists of a king-sized springboard with a sheet covering it, mosquito netting, a fan, a sink (which is pretty exciting, because our first place didn't have one), and a pretty gross open-air concrete bathroom. It's a few steps from the beach and I couldn't be happier with it!

So it's my last day here and I'm going to go up the street for some fresh pineapple, then spend one more afternoon in the sun, because early tomorrow morning, we're catching a ferry to the mainland and a 5 1/2 hour bus ride back to Bangkok, where we'll check out the floating night market for one night, then head north to Chaing Mai.

And on a final note...we gathered our American friends together as well as our Scandinavian, Brit, Aussie and Thai friends and went to a bar called Ting Tong (means 'crazy' or 'insane' in Thai) and watched Obama's inauguration! It's amazing to think that on this little island off of Thailand we were able to watch CNN...it just blows my mind a little and I feel very lucky