DAY 400: Paul and I met in the Sawasdee House's trendy-looking ground floor restaurant that morning, the same way we did every morning in Bangkok thus far. It had become our Central Perk (from Friends), our Monk's Cafe (from Seinfeld). He nursed his bottle of water while I sipped on a Thai iced coffee. Cold coffee, for Paul, wasn't a concept he could grasp -- but to each his own taste.

"What are your plans for today?" I asked him.

"I need to get me camera sorted out," he told me. I forgot that he told me he needed to get his big SLR serviced since it ceased to power on after an Aussie girl he had traveled through Kashmir with dropped it by accident.

"I think I might check out the temples around here," I told him, pointing to a section on my map after he reciprocated the question. He seemed disinterested -- he had been to Bangkok many times before and really knew that all temples looked the same (i.e. he was "templed out") -- and had his own errands to run anyway, but we made plans to meet up later that evening.

I GOT SIDETRACKED RIGHT AWAY when I started my walk towards my first temple -- beyond the nearby Democracy Monument, commemorating the transition of absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy in 1932 -- and I saw from my map that I could check out the sights of the nearby Dusit district first. I got even more sidetracked when I got lost in Bangkok's streets on the way there (I was disoriented as to which way was north), but managed to stroll through a nice, quiet residential neighborhood of Bangkokers, with houses so close together between intimate alleyways, so secluded from the backpacker district that I felt that I was intruding on someone's property.

I eventually found the Dusit area, where some sort of Thai Muslim carnival fair was going on. In front of the Parliament building was the point-of-interest I saw on my map, the statue of King Rama V. Also known as King Chulanglongkorn, he was (and still is) arguably Thailand's most revered king, who reigned from 1868 to 1910. It was because of his strong hand that Thailand never got occupied and colonized by the British and French, who at the time, had infiltrated the neighboring countries like Cambodia and Vietnam. King Rama V has also been credited for abolishing slavery and modernizing Thai society -- and hey, while we're at it, we can thank him for bringing yummy Thai food to the rest of the world too (but don't quote me on that).

BEFORE MY BARRAGE OF TEMPLES I went to check out the Queen's Gallery, a contemporary art gallery showcasing the latest show "Trinity" by painter Thawan Duchanee, an exhibition with a series of three-headed creatures in a wild, almost comic book style. It was unlike anything I'd seen in the art world recently, which is the exact opposite notion when I finally went out to see the temples. Yes, when you've seen many temples, especially on a trip like this one, many of them begin to look the same and you get "templed out" -- the key to keeping sane is to see them in moderation.

With that said, I decided to see only three that afternoon, each one unique in its own way. Wat Saket, a big golden pagoda 80 meters tall, was built atop the Golden Mount, an artificial hill with a view of the city, accessible by a big, long spiral staircase. Wat Suthat housed Thailand's largest cast-bronze Buddha, as well as some statues of horses sculpted with attention to anatomic detail. And Wat Arun, also known as the Temple of Dawn, was on the other side of the Chao Phraya River (easily accessible by ferry for just 2 baht). With its Khmer-style architecture, the Temple of Dawn was meant to be seen in the dawn's early light, but I thought that it was just as impressive at dusk as well (picture above).

"SOMEONE DIED HERE," Paul told me back at the house as we were munching on the fried chicken we were offered by the two girls working the travel desk who had befriended us. "I seen the body. An American guy. He was from my floor." Paul got details from a police officer when they got prints and carried the body away down the block. Apparently, an American backpacker had drank himself to death -- not surprisingly, the bar/club scene of the Khaosan Road area would be conducive to such a thing -- and the night before he had been in the bathroom vomiting over a toilet, only to choke on his own puke and suffocate. A cleaning woman found his body the next morning. What a shame.

With such a downer on the mind, there was just one pick-me up to do. No, not go drinking you alkie, I'm talking about the Thai massage. Bangkok is full of many massage parlors, many of them fronts for prostitution, which really isn't a good thing with the epidemic of AIDS and other STDs around the country. Paul knew of one parlor that was legit and we paid the 180 baht for a one-hour session each.

After a woman washed off our stinky feet, we were led upstairs to disrobe and put on this huge pair of boxer trunks big enough for Michael Moore. We were led into a big dimly lit room of mattresses where a speaker softly played soothing Asian melodies. The two women asked to lie down on the mattresses and relax. Uh, is this place really legit Paul? I wondered.

It was legit in the end; there was no sexual or romantic undertones with these two. Mine laughed at me for some reason and Paul's girl actually teased his hairiness and called him "Monkey Boy." To add to the legitimacy, as the hour progressed, the room filled up with other clients, both male and female, each with a professional Thai masseuse.

The Thai technique involves a lot of kneading, pulling and stretching (unlike the Chinese one, which involves a lot of hard pressing on pressure points) and it was every bit relaxing as I had heard about. The grand finale was when we placed our heads in the girls' laps, and they massaged our face muscles and temples; it was one case where I wouldn't have minded getting "templed out."

PAUL AND I WERE OUT FOR STREET FOOD and a couple of drinks that night, when one girl that he met in his travels a while back recognized him on the street. The Irish girl was Orla and with her was fellow Irish girl Ruth; we hit it off right away and went out for a round in a local pub to talk the regular backpacker stuff. The session, which might have escalated into something longer, was short-lived when the Irish pair called it quits early because they had to pack to leave the following day.

Paul and I headed back to the Sawasdee House to partake in a nightcap, some of his prized bottle of Glenfiddich whiskey, which he only brought out for special occasions (which was pretty often).

"Oh, that's nice," I said, the velvety liquor hitting my lips and going down smoothly.

"Smooth as a baby's bottom," Paul said.

Aged fifteen years, Glenfiddich is not a liquor to gorge and Paul knew this; he poured just two mini-shots for the each of us, enough to get us warm and toasty and a bit more drunk, but nothing too crazy -- unlike the guy whose body was found on the third floor bathroom that morning.

I guess in a city like Bangkok, a city where you can get mostly any vice you want and plenty of it, a place where you can get "templed out" by day and "boozed out" by night (sometimes permanently as we learned), the key to survival is definitely moderation -- at least until the next binge session.