The flight from NYC to Tokyo was long (13 hrs), but I think I was only up for about 4 hours of it. When I finally got to Narita Airport, it took me forever to figure out how to call the U.S. All the payphones have these crazy computer screens in Japanese. The dumbest thing was that I couldn't just use my credit card to make a call, or an AT&T phone card. No I had to go exchange for Japanese Yen so I could buy some stupid 1000 Yen card (about $10 USD) and in the end I think I got less than 6 minutes usage out of it before it died.

And then from Tokyo, it was another 7 hours to Bangkok. The hostel that I'm staying at, Suk 11 is a really a lovely Thai style guesthouse. You can smell the different scented woods they used in the building structures as you walk in through the halls. Or maybe it's the incense being burned for Buddha. In any case, in this guesthouse, you Know you're in Thailand. THe rooms are clean and simple. And the other travelers are really friendly. I met this older German woman, about 51, whom had traveled all over the world. She had just gotten back from Hanoi in Vietnam. But she's been to Africa, ASiA, South America, everywhere except for the American Midwest.

I also met a guy from Australia interning for the Bangkok Post to some guys from Boulder, Colorado. There are an awful lot of travelers here, youngish 20s- early 30s from the UK, Australia who are on these long extended trips (like 6-12 months) through Asia or around the world. Americans need to stop working so much. I'd so love to be able to do that. K, you gotta finish your PhD so that we can go traveling.

I met up with my friend Michelle today and we went traveling around the city together. We stopped and had lunch at some corner food stall where all these other Thai people were eating. We had no idea what we ordered; all the signs were in Thai, and we said "noodles" to the waitress hoping she might understand. "Noodles" could mean anything though, like walking into an Italian restaurant and saying you want "pasta." But what came back was really good; almost a soupy Pad Thai, with cilantro, basil, bean sprouts, pork, and some other things I have no idea about. And best of all, it was only 25 baht (The exchange rate right now is about 39 baht = $1USD.) I love Asia.

After that, we went to see the famous emerald buddha (which is actually carved entirely from a single hunk of jade), which I didn't realize wasn't green; it's covered in gold leaf. I was going to go to the National Palace, but it was closed today; the Queen of the Netherlands is visiting and staying there. In fact, the cops stopped us on the street and made us wait so that her motorcade could go speeding by. I saw her Rolls-Royce but I didn't see her. All the hoopla over her visit is pretty funny, since when I was in Amsterdam, the Dutch kept taking pride in Queen Beatrix routinely rides around Amsterdam by herself on her bike.

Bangkok is pretty easy to get around, but it's much like New York in that the biggest concern is always the traffic. Anything you can do to avoid the traffic you do. They have a great modern Sky Train though. We took that from the hostel to the end of one of the lines, hopped onto a boat and traveled up the river to the northwestern part of the city.

Right now I'm in a nice air-conditioned internet bar, in this crazy ultra-modern mall. Bangkok is truly a mixture of the past 500 years mixed together. So many super highways, and yet street markets are like what you may have imagined 500 years ago. Except for the bootleg dvds.