Day Five

I woke up with a cold sore on my upper lip. Apparently my immune system has been compromised. Having a fat lip doesn't exactly help give me the confidence necessary to meet people. Not that there was really anyone to meet, it seemed that I was in a little exclave of Germany. Not only at the Guest house, but all around the ruins in the city the only foreign white people I saw seemed to be German.

Nevertheless, I rented a bicycle to explore on my own. My first task was shopping. I needed a memory card and some Deet. There was a big shopping center not too far away that had both. It was fairly straight forward, though I could only find %15 deet lotion. I would have preferred a higher amount to keep the bugs away for good. I bought a 512 mb memory card for 1500 baht. Something like 40 USD. Seemed fairly reasonable.

Afterwards I set out to explore the ruins on my own. I went to the Wat Phra Mahathat first. There is a tree there which has grown over an ancient buddha head. Its very interesting, most all of the other buddha statues have had the heads cut off and sold. Thai entreprenurialism at its best. There isn't much else there as the towering structure had collapsed about a hundred years ago. Some large sitting buddhas with there heads still on were there too.

Across the road is another ancient temple, this one has the tower still intact. Unlike european historical structures, the Thai let you climb up and on things. Not very good for preservation, but it makes it much more interesting when you can walk up and inside things on your own. Inside of this tower there were three levels to descend into. The lower you went, the hotter it was, but the more intact were the ancient murals. The were mostly corroded away. But in the bottommost level, which is barely large enough for one person to fit into, the murals were intact. It is sad though, because they are not being preserved. I could have chipped off a little piece of an ancient mural for a souvenir had I liked too.

...

This morning I took a train to Lopburi. There are more ruins here, but these ones are supposedly run over by wild monkeys.

Day Four

I took a train to Ayutthya. It took me awhile to find the guest house, and when I did the lady wanted me to go on a tuk tuk tour of the ruins in the city. I didn't have anything else to do, and the price was reasonable, 180 baht for a three hour tour. I thought maybe it would be a good way to meet some new people.

It could have been, except that the four other people were two german couples who wanted to get to know each other, in german. They were friendly, and occasionally spoke to me in english. We saw many ruins and stopped to play with some elephants. The ruins are erie after dark.

Unfortunately, not having a memory card for the camera, I didn't get to take many pictures. I'll try to find one today, but it seems like it will be a challenge.

Day Three

My new friends friend arrived. Upon which I thought initially that I would be alone again. Luckily, however, they invited me to spend the day with them. I was relieved.

It was at times akward. Perhaps a short description of their relationship is in order: Two women who have known eachother for sometime. They are both from Twin Falls, Idaho. The most important detail though is that this meeting was the first time in nearly two years that they have seen each other. The second one, Victoria, has been in the Peace Core in Kyrgyzstan for that time, and has come here on Vaction to hang out with her friend. Needless to say, they had a lot of catching up to do. I know quite a bit about the social network of middle twenty somethings in Twin Falls now. I felt a bit out of place. But most of this chatting occured at a place called Larry's Dive, which is probably one of the only Mexican Restaurants in all of Bangkok. The food was good, so I was happy.

But they are both very kind, and never once did they make me feel as though I were in their way.

So then more fun. I have had enough experience with this in my life that it is strangely relieving: we went shopping. Or rather, they shopped and I followed. The markets here are giant. And everything is really cheap.

Two things first. The only real chain store in Thailand is 7-11. They are everywhere and the are air conditioned and have really cheap water, so they are very useful. Secondly, nearly every place that is flat has some vendor on it. So accross the street from the hostel is a 7-11, and surrounding that are stree vendors. Mostly food. Well, they wanted to get some food. So we found a place, and this extrodinary man who owned the place started to chat with us. His english was very good, and he was wearing a navy hat. He was in his mid 60's I would guess. So I immediately thought that he must have spent some time in the military, probably during Viet-nam. As his story unfolded, and as he proudly showed off his Social Security card, and FCC radio operating cards, he let it be known that he had flown for Air America, the private airline secretly owned by the CIA that delivered supplies to the secret wars in Laos and Cambodia during the Viet-Nam war. He was very kind, and interesting.

Later that evening we went out to the Sukhumvit area of Bangkok to find some bars. I should have known better. Somewhere I had read that this area was frequented by sex tourists, and that we should have gone to the Backpacker area where there would be people our age. So in this area there are prostitutes everywhere, and middle aged white men. The first bar we tried to go in was this area down an alley with all kinds of pretty lights. We were whisked up an elevator into a balcony area. The elevator only went up, so we had to walk all around. The first door up the escalator, some people tried to push us into, and as they opened the door, we saw, to our surprise, mostly naked women dancing. We all took a step back, and gasped. Not what we were expecting. So we had to walk all the way around this balcony area, every few feet a door opening with the same thing. At one point a prostitue grabbed my arm and tried to pull me in. It was frightening. Some of them were poorly disguised males. They even grabbed one of my companions, who is female. We left there berwildered, but found a very nice bar on a rooftop with only a few prostitutes entertaining a couple of men, very laid back in comparison. That wasn't the end of it though, as we were walking off of that street some strange women walking by stuck her hand out and tickled my stomach. I also thought prostitution exploited women, but here I felt objectified and uncomfortable, not the other way around.

Day Two

The day started out not so good. The problem is that the area where this hostel is located is not very friendly to tourists. Its dirty, poor, and their are not many foreigners. So when I tried to find the subway by myself it was a bit disconcerting, culture shock maybe.

Luckily there was another lone traveller in the hotel, who hadn't even tried to venture out, so I introduced myself, and we set out to explore together. It was much better that way.

We must have walked accross half the city, despite using both the subway and the skytrain. And in the heat and the humidity, sweat gushes out of me. Despite drinking three large bottles of water and two cups of coffee, I only urinated once during the day, the rest of the liquid leaving through my pores.

But walking is interesting, as you can see much more. Bangkok being the capital of Thailand, the area that we walked through had alot of government offices, interesting ones like The Office for the Empowerment of People with Disabilities, and also the Kings palace. It seems as though every other person is wearing a yellow shirt, which is a symbol of their respect for the King.

The Kings moat is an interesting sight, despite the fact that it looks like a sewer, there is an outrageosly thriving ecosystem. The water moves with life. And situated alongside it every 100 yards or so is a man with a big gun, though they aren't all that frightening as one clearly had an ipod he was listening too. Anyway, in this moat live thousands of fish, you can see there bodies just under the surface (they must be close to the top as the water is murky). Also there are the occasional turtle. But most interesting of all was the existence of giant lizards. I saw at least three giant lizards at leat two feet in length, not including the tail. All in the kings dirty moat.

There are warnings throughout my guidebook, and on the tourist maps to beware of extra friendly locals. Its apparently a fairly common occurence to be approached by some stranger, who just really wants to help you do all the neat stuff you can. And there is always something that is just about to close, or that is only open for one day (that day) that you just must see. So after looking over our map and telling us where we need to go, and also pointing out where to get a really nice tailored suit, a tuk tuk pulls up. This right after he informed us that you haven't been to thailand if you've not been on a tuk tuk. (These are three wheeled open air taxis.) And then you know its a scam. Its quite disillusioning, but I'm glad I was warned.

Then dinner: the food here is extremely spicy. And after that we took a taxi back to the hotel. The taxi driver was very friendly and taught us a few Thai phrases, and told us about how much he liked the king. He was wearing a yellow shirt.

Day One

I have arrived, and the air is thick.

Here's What To Expect

1.) I cannot say how often I will be able to write updates. It could be every other day, or every week. It all depends on circumstances of which I am still uncertain.
2.) This does not, however, imply gaps in the chronology of my jouney; as I will be keeping a written journal I will always be able to keep the story up to date.
3.) Thanks for paying attention/ you're welcome for the experience of living vicariously through me.