48 hours in Bangkok

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After a long and not too troublesome trip from NYC to Bangkok via Souel, South Korea I arrived at the airport and meet up with Rich almost immediatly. I have never been through a immigration or customs with such ease...somehow I don't think they have any issues with another American tourist coming into town. I meet up with Rich as planned and we and another backpacker shared a cab to the infomous Khao San Road where our hotel was located. We arrived at our hotel at 2:00am and everyone was excited to go out and experiening a little Thai night life. After getting a few drinks we ended up walking around the whole area meandering in and out of bars, which never close, and eating small treats we found along the way. Did I mention the Pad Thai for 50 cents? Yeah, Pad Thai, crickets, grumbs, sticky rice with sweet coconuct sause, spicy curry, and anything else you could imagine are in the streets. All the street vendors set up little kitchens right on the street and prepare/cook everything right in front of your eyes. Tonight, Sunday, we had a mixed bag of insects: grumbs, crickets, silk worm larve, and grasshoppers all for $1, a total steal! Back to Friday night... after sampling all we could handle we finally watched the sunrise and went to bed.

Our first real day in Bangkok was much less productive and was mainly filled with suite shopping. What started out as an outing to see a silk factory turned into a 2 horus excusion to one of the best tailors in Bangkok and apprently the world....how much of this is true, who knows but I haev to say I did get a good price on the quality of stuff they produce. My mom will soon find out when they arrive at her door in a few weeks. I will say one thing the people of Thailand are great sales people. Late to bed the night before lead to early to bed that evening and we didn't even make it past 7:00pm.

Jetlag woke us up at 5:00am which proved to be very benifical as we did some major sight seeing today and managed to book the next 14 days. Two buddas later and miles of walking we saw a good portion of the city which ended in a boat tour the the largets part of the river that bisects the city. Bangkok is known as the Venice of the east, same sewage problem but definatly nicer people. After a long day we finished it with a few beers and a thai massage....a legit thai massage.

Tomorrow evening we'll be taking an overnight train to Chang Mai and spending some time trekking and potentially some climbing. We've heard it's much more relaxed and not as busy as Bangkok. The streets of Bangkok are full of traffic and polution and we're looking forward to things slowing down a bit, less people, and hopefully a little cleaner.

PS- I'm pretty sure my massuse was a ladyboy.

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Comments

[reece]

suits
here's the thing about getting suits made... it may fit you now, but with a diet of crickets and rice it's going to be huge on you by the time you get back!

[Kyle]

Oh you got a TS Massage
Oh johnny i think they like to be called cross dressers...lol post some pics up. Have fun!

[Jen]

Start
Hey guys- Sounds like you are off to a good start! Not sure about the grasshoppers, but hey who knows....

[Ed]

Royal Dragon
The Mang Gorn Luang (Royal Dragon) restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand - the largest restaurant in the world. The restaurant covers 8.3 acres, has over 1,000 staff, and accomodates 5000 guests. The servers wear roller skates, use speedboats to cross the large decorative ponds and fly on ziplines from upper levels to lower ones, while the kitchen is capable of turning out 3,000 dishes an hour!