Bonjour-Mundo!

Hey there all! We are currently in Chang Mai, Thailand, and it is absolutely awesome. I just got a foot massage for an hour for four dollars and cooked delicious thai food all day long though, so I may be slightly biased. 😉

To start things off though, I should catch you up on Bangkok, the start of our Thai adventure.  The city in itself is quite a place, overwhelming to say the least. It is the largest city in thailand by far, and you certainly can tell from the towering buildings and smog that has settled overhead. Many of the officers that work to control the traffic were masks as protection from all the fumes.

 However, despite the traffic and the honking, and the rush of people, it’s an amazing place to see. I was struck by all the contrasts that exist in the city. From the extreme poverty of the houses along the river to the skyscrapers that erupt in wealth behind them. There are seats reserved on the high tech metro and skytrains for the monks, and just as the monks seem out of place there, so do the people in their western attire as we poke around their temples and shrines. There seems to be a real fusion of modern versus traditional, and its interesting just to sit back and watch.

The Thai people have also been so wonderful throughout our stay so far. The are so full of warmth and seem to be genuinely happy with life.

A few highlights of our time in Bangkok…

FOOD!!! Thai cusine is fantastic (and fantastically cheap!) We have eaten all kinds of noodles and rice and soups and satays and crazy fruit like none you’ve seen before and papaya salads that put a fire to your lips. Its all super tasty, and we generally eat from the street vendors who charge around 50-75 cents for dinner. Can’t complain. Although we haven’t eaten anything too weird yet (minus Alex who we think had soup with steamed chicken blood) we have seen vendors with various fried critters and even some frog kababs…We’ll see how gutsy we get.

We also ate at this wonderful restaurant called Condoms and Cabbages, which deserves a mention. The entire place is decorated in, you guessed it, condoms! They managed to make some really pretty lamps, believe it or not. The premise of the place is aids and safe sex awareness, and it has actually gone a long way to help the AIDS fight in thailand. All the procedes from their shop and the wishing well, and I believe even a portion from their procedes all goes to development and health projects in Thailand. Eating great food turned into a good deed for the day.

WATS! Such a refreshing change from Europe, the Thai temples are amazing to see. We went to the grand palace and temple of the emerald buddah on our first day, and I don’t think we managed to pick our jaws up off the floor for quite some time, it was magical to see. The outer facades are incredibly ornate and detailed, everything is so full of color and sparkle. The architecture is just beautiful.

MARKETS! Markets in Thailand are everywhere, and theyre great. They sell everything and anything: from sarongs to ninja stars to puppies. And they are CHEAP! They have also been nice in that they, at least so far, seem to be free of the pressure of markets like those in Morocco and Senegal. The people let you look without harrassment and you don’t have to haggle nearly as hard.

I have lots more to say, but our time is up for the night…and this post is already long. So I will end it there. I hope you all are doing well!

Tags: Thailand, Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, May 22nd, 2006 at 7:27 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.