Bangkok

Tonight's my last night in Bangkok. I'm getting up at the asscrack of dawn tomorrow to make my way to Konchanaburi for tiger-petting! I figured I'd spend the night there and then come back to Bangkok in the morning to spend some time in Chinatown before catching the overnight train up to Chiang Mai. I'm insanely tired, and I'm guessing this four-different-beds-in-four-nights thing isn't gonna help. I *so* wish I were Australian. The government there mandates that they get four weeks of vacation per year. Lucky bastards.

But I digress...

I spent my birthday yesterday visiting all the main sites in Bangkok. I took a ferry to the Grand Palace and then walked from there to Wat Pho. I also spent a lot of time wandering through the Amulet Market, which is a long line of street stalls selling random stuff, ranging from traditional medicines to little keychains to small-potato-looking fruits. The Grand Palace is massive. You wander through the whole thing and then take off your shoes to go inside the room with the Emerald Buddha -- and the Emerald Buddha is so small you can barely find it among the surrounding gold and jewels.

On the other end of the spectrum, the reclining Buddha in Wat Pho is so big it looks like it's going to explode out of its little holding space.

While I was in the downtown area (I'm sure that's not what they call it), I stumbled into this festival-type thing. I initially thought it was a market but then saw what looked like a date range on a sign outside, so I figured it must be a festival. I wandered through there for a while and tried to find vegetarian food. Turns out, the word "vegetable" is really difficult for non-English speakers to say (and thus, to understand), so I ended up trudging along to all the different stalls, pointing to "I only eat vegetarian food" in my Thai phrasebook. This prompted many polite "no's" and I eventually settled on a stall with some noodle-looking things on display and asked the lady for what the person before me had. It turned out to be a concoction of cabbage-like noodle-looking-things, tomato, cabbage, spices and shrimp. The lady mushed it all up in a big cauldron-looking thing and put it on a plate with something that looked like green branches on top.

When I got back to my guesthouse yesterday around 5 p.m. I figured I'd relax for a little while and then head out to get dinner and more blister pads from the Really Expensive Pharmacy For Foreigners. I half woke up a few hours later and decided I wasn't going anywhere. Apparently I'm getting very, very old.

This morning I went to the Chatuchek Weekend Market, which is this sprawling metropolis of stalls selling everything from shirts to incense to food to underwear. One stall sold both food *and* underwear. The vendors here are way less aggressive and pushy than the ones in Morocco and China, where they yell at you and try to pull you into their booths. I was a little surprised by the chill factor given how pushy the tuk-tuk drivers are.

Tuk-tuks are motorized three-wheelers with back seats. They're kind of like taxis but they're not metered so you negotiate a fare before getting on. The drivers are notorious rip-off artists and often take people to guesthouses, etc. that give them commissions. They also like to hang out by bus stops and try to get people to use them instead. One wanted me to get in his tuk-tuk for "10 baht anywhere," but I'm sure he would have tried to charge me more if I took him up on it.

I've actually sort of figured out the lay of the land here. I took the bus to the subway today to get to the weekend market, which is on the outskirts of town. That was easy enough because the fare-collecting girl on the bus was nice enough to tell me when we were at my stop. I thought I'd have a lot more trouble on the way back, because I didn't know the name of the bus stop and the fare-collecting-guy was considerably less friendly. But I totally surprised myself and got off at the exact right stop and even walked in the right direction to my guesthouse on the first try. Because I'm just that awesome.

So I guess that's all that's worth telling. Oooh except I forgot to tell you people about the best part of the flight here. The plane had individual TVs at each seat, and there were options for television shows, movies or video games (I played Super Mario Bros. till my thumbs blistered. The best part: The TV shows option had three categories -- Comedy, Hits,and Grey's Anatomy. That's right -- I had 10 episodes of Grey's Anatomy to keep me occupied. I love the Thai.

Tigers tomorrow. Maybe I'll update from Konchanaburi.