Out of Bangkok

Hey all,

I am currently in a small hostel in a small town called Sukhotai. There are some ancient wat (temple) ruins here, but more on that later...

I left Bangkok a couple of days ago and am pretty glad to be out of that city. It's utter madness. I don't even know where to begin. Its a true hustle and bustle city. The populations around 8.5 million so its about the same population size of New York City. Cars and motor-scooters zip through the streets with no regard for traffic lanes (or laws). Basically if you can fit your vehicle in the space, do it, and the more agressive at driving you are the better. And tuk-tuks, little three-wheeled open aired vehicles are the city's taxi cab. Its pretty cheap to get around if you haggle well, and because they have three wheels, they can maneuver really well and squeeze between cars. It's loads of fun, mostly because you know that if you were to get hit by another car, you would have zero chance of survival... PREMIUM RUSH!!

Here's what it looks like to be in the back of one: (this driver tried to scam us*)




The Bangkok streets are filled with markets upon markets. Vendors are selling everything from food, to t-shirts, to samsung-tablets, to pellet guns, to knock off dvds, etc. The food that is sold on the street is super cheap, about $1 for a pad-thai and its delicious, almost as good as No Thai. And even if you don't eat the food, you can't help but smell it all. Most things are cooked over a little charcoal grill, and the charcoal in thailand has a very distinct bitter taste with a hint of sweetness. You can smell it from a kilometer away (I've switched to metric while I am here. maybe forever. hopefully forever). All types of food are on the carts, chicken, duck, squid, fish, thai meatballs, and its been great just jumping right in and treating my tongue to novel tastes.

Here is a picture of the Bangkok's famous (and very pungent) Chinatown neighborhood.  (Thailand and China and  the other surrounding nations have an intertwined history due to kingdoms ruling over various lands and people. Thus there is a mix of cultures, yet there are undoubtedly distinct).

As I said earlier, and as you can see from the chinatown picture, the city is loud and always moving. But there are plenty of buddhist temples (wats) throughout Bangkok. The wats truly isolate you from the city. Its almost bizzare. Once you enter the wat, you can't even hear a hint of the tuk-tuks horns beeping or ambulance or whatever.It's like a sound forcefield. All you hear is some birds chirping, and its incredibly serene and beautiful and peaceful.

Here is a pic of the outside of a Wat:

And this is the inside:

I'll leave you with that above picture for now. As it is a nice way to end the post.

*And I'll write about the the scamming and city's sex culture, ladyboy, pingpong pussy culture later.. I need to go back through Bangkok eventually, so I will probably write about it then. (Also these pictures are not off the internet, my buddy has a camera)