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Published: June 27th 2009
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Sidestreet
Nice sidestreet branching off from the central area in the old town where the red shirt rally was being held Hello (or sawatdee khraaaaab, as they say here... you hold the "aaa" for politeness) from unfortunately not-so-sunny Bangkok! Hello to my new blog, as well.
As promised to many over the past many weeks I finally found a moment to create this and write out my first entry, but of course like a doofus I forgot to bring the USB cord for my camera from the hotel room, so sadly I cannot grace this entry with pictures until a little later. But anyway, I'm here, and surprisingly not nearly as jet lagged as you might guess...
Some of you know that I'm traveling with my sister Leila for the next two weeks before she heads up north to Chiang Rai to volunteer as a teacher in a nearby village, so it's in part thanks to her that the adjustment hasn't been as difficult as it probably could have been. Another factor is the city itself, and Lonely Planet (my bible for the next six weeks) summed up Bangkok perfectly: it's a sort of decompression chamber, like a bridge between the East and the West where travellers coming in and out get a little (or a lot) of both worlds
7 Eleven!
Shelter during the downpour as they adjust from one to the other. We haven't yet gotten much of a chance to explore the city, but we have already experienced Kao Sahn road... billed as a backpacker's paradise, and definitely lives up to expectation, probably even beyond. As you can imagine we were exhausted when we arrived at our hotel nearby around 12am after 23 straight hours of traveling, but somehow this place energized us enough to keep us up throughout the evening (maybe our internal clocks helped us as well, telling us it's really actually noontime in the States). Throughout the night this place was jam-packed - vendors of all stripes selling anything and everything from cheap knock-off polo shirts to various sorts of strange looking meatballs on skewers (I had a beef one, I think, though I don't really care what it was because it simply tasted amazing) and of course a thousand people, Thais as well as westerners, running about, chatting, drinking and just having a blast!
One entertaining moment that night was when another girl, definitely no older than 14 or 15, came up to us selling roses, which we respectfully declined maybe 10 separate times until she gave up
Susie's Walkway
Cool little nook connecting Kao Sahn road and the street our hotel is on. and challenged me to a thumb war instead. I should have known where this was going, and obviously I got rocked both times and lost 200 bhat but somehow gained two dozen wilting roses, which I promptly distributed to the neighboring tables, causing much joy in the bar. Sadly I can't even deny this - Leila caught all of this on video and probably will upload it to YouTube before too long. Thanks, sis!
What a night! We met English, Danes, Canadians and Irish people, and the one American I ran into left his own indelible mark to the sink in the bathroom, which I avoided washing my hands in for the rest of the evening. The Irishmen were by far the most entertaining - singing Johnny Cash tunes outside the bar, holding a garbage bag filled with warm Tiger beers, and we proceeded to make great friends with them as the night began to wind down. They're also going to be in Koh Phangan for the full moon party on July 9th (highly recommended by the Candadian guys - basically a huge beach party featuring upwards of 5 djs)
On to today... we slept until about 2pm
Kao Sahn
At night - so many people, so much to do and see! (sooo nice), so it was a little short. We spent the time we had just walking around the downtown area, bought one of the cheap knockoff polo shirts on Kao Sahn road, went further downtown, running into a rally of Red-Shirts (one of Thailand's political parties and rivals of the Yellow-Shirts... I don't know exactly what they stand for besides their obvious tastes in fashion) which was abruptly ended by a torrential downpour, ending our afternoon in the area. We returned and grabbed some food at a bar/restaurant in Susie's Walkway, a small road off Kao Sahn, listening to live acoustic music by a couple local artists playing Jack Johnson, Oasis, ect, with excellent sounding personal touches to the songs. Tomorrow we meet up with Ying, a friend of my replacement at my job at IPI, who will take us around the sites and popular spots for the locals here in Bangkok. We might extend our stay here until Tuesday, but eventually we'll be making our way to Koh Tao, where I'll begin my scuba diving lessons ($250 vs. $1,000 in the States - you can't beat that!) and then on to Koh Phangan and Koh Samui. Can't wait to keep you updated on our adventures on the way. If our first 24 hours here are any indication, there'll be more than plenty to talk about!
Sawatdee khrab!!
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