Sat 20/12/08 08:22

So I met up with the tour tonight. There are 12 of us in total and there are actually some other Americans going too. Still too many Aussies though. It’s kind of funny, I’m having flashbacks of my summer trip too. I keep thinking about meeting Alex and Courtney, and all the others and how much fun I had on the trip… I hope I have half as much fun on this one. The one bad thing about this group is I’m either the oldest or almost the oldest… does it matter? Kind of. I hate being thought of as “old” and there is a good chance that that is going to happen. There’s a cute girl in the group as well. She’s from England.

We went and had a good meal at a small restaurant a few blocks from the hotel and finished just about 30 minutes ago. I don’t feel like “calling it a night” just yet and I may take off for a walk when I get done here. After all, by what I consider to be the right time it’s only 9pm… who knows for sure though, it could be 5 in the morning. :)

Tomorrow the group takes off for some sightseeing around the city. I guess we’re going to go to some temples which should be fun.

I can’t seem to shake the flashbacks from the summer… particularly Katya… I hate when that happens. Too bad it seems to happen way too often.

Today I got up at about 6 am to go to the floating market in the outskirts of Bangkok. Considering I’ve lost complete understanding of time it seems really early for me. My best guess is that it’s 4 hours ahead of dubai time, but when I thought that the wakeup call that I received this morning was an hour late it turned out that I was working yesterday an hour ahead. So although I think I’m on the right time right now, I know that I was ready for my plane ride on time, and it’s the right time zone… so who knows for sure… actually does it really matter? :)

So today I went to the floating market. I’m not sure if anyone is familiar with it or not, but I had seen it in several movies, and it was one of the things that I was desperate to see… I mean if I didn’t get to see it, I think I would have felt that this time to Thailand would have been less than successful. It was great though, we took a speed boat to the market once we got to the staging area… the kind of boat that has the old car engine attached to a really long bar and propeller. Once we got to the market, we rented a row boat and they took us along the market. The whole thing was really tourist”y” but I really enjoyed it. I met some nice people and got to see something that I’ve always wanted to experience. The tour also took us to some other spots, the snake farm, for elephant rides, and to the national crafts school, namely it’s for wood working. The snake farm was interesting, but it was really kind of shameful the way they treated the snakes. One guy teased a king cobra for a while and then paraded it around to show all of us. That in itself was interesting and really not too bad, but then they put cobra into a glass box with a mongoose. That was really kind of pathetic, almost like watching a dog fight. Two animals trying to survive/kill just for the pleasure of humans. Just for the record, they didn’t let the animals kill each other, but the mongoose had a death grip on the cobra and they actually had to pry it off. Some of the people I was with really got off on it though.

Later on I went to a computer center. I have never seen anything like it in my life. If you can imagine a bunch of small shops all condensed into a building you would get the idea. The difference is, is this place was huge, five storeys of nothing but computer shops… for a geek I thought I was going to go to nirvana. Not to mention the prices. As I write this, the baht is 32 to 1 dollar. So things like a gps that sells for $366.00 in Dubai is selling here for $200. I got so overwhelmed on prices that I started to think that I was making a mistake on the exchange rate. Everything is like that, jeans sell for less than $10, clocks for about 2. I kept thinking that there was some mistake, but I guess not. I think I’m going to go back and buy the gps tomorrow.

In about an hour I meet up with my tour group. I’m looking forward to being around people that I can talk to. I hope though that I’m not the odd-man-out. You know the only American, the only single person, the only…I don’t just the only, only.

Fri 19/12/08 07:38

So I got to my hotel at about 4 this afternoon after some serious gridlocked traffic. It was great though driving through the city at about 5 mph. Going at that speed you really get to see a lot of different things well that you wouldn’t normally get to see.

I guess I should fill people in on my trip to get to bangkok though before I go into this place. The flights were as usual, some minor annoyances like people coughing constantly. I know that doesn’t sound that bad, but this guy was sitting behind me and coughing so hard that he was blowing my hair forward. :) Other than the usual things the trip was okay. I didn’t get to get off the plane in Karachi, and I didn’t get to leave the airport in Kuala Lumpur so those two things were kind of a disappointment, but hey, I’m in Bangkok.

The only thing I can say about Bangkok is “wow!” The city is huge, and it’s packed with people. People everywhere you go they’re on foot, driving tut-tuts, motor cycles and cars. I’ve never been anywhere with so many people. Beijing doesn’t even compare to this place in shear density of humans. The city is huge and makes Dubai look like a small town in the amount of buildings, though I assume that will most likely change after a few more years.

I’ve been walking around a little today, but I’ve been so afraid that I’d get lost that I’ve been staying around the hotel. It’s not bad, the major tourist things are here so I’ve seen quite a bit in the short time that I’ve been around.

There is a Christmas music festival going on right now in the main shopping area. About 5 stages are set up all with different bands and entertainers. People were lined up to get in all of them so I stayed out on the outside and watched from a distance. I took a video of one drum band and I’ll upload the video when I get a chance.