myrainasia

As opposed to most of the other tourists who seem to zip in and out of Bangkok in a day or two, I am still here a week later.  Partly inertia, partly had to take care of some things, partly because undecided on which way to go, and partly because, as a dedicated New Yorker I just like wandering around big cities.  And Bangkok is big!  The maps are very deceptive.  I walk less than an inch and it takes half an hour.  Okay, 25 minutes of that involves standing at street corners trying to figure out if I will make it across alive.

Reception at my hotel find it very amusing when I approach in the morning and say “One more day.”  But I have figured it out now.  Well, a little.  Tomorrow I am doing a morning boat trip to see The Floating Market and Sunday I am booked for a day tour to Ayutthaya, a city about 1 hour north of Bangkok, with instructions to leave me there when the tour van brings everyone else back to Bangkok.  Prices in Bangkok are embarassingly low, especially after Australia and New Zealand.  I think I could do a week tour here for the price of a day tour in Australia.

 The week has had its down side.  As I have independently reported to many of you, my camera “disappeared” 2 days ago.  I can’t say if it was lifted or if I left it in the one place I sat down (which, by the way was a Buddhist temple- someone may be looking at some really bad karma)  after my last known photo and before realizing it was gone, but I retraced my steps and it was definitely gone.  That put me into a funk- one does get attached to one’s camera- especially after 2500 photos- and I needed to properly mourn.  The good news is that I only lost 1 day’s worth of photos (20?25?) because I had uploaded over 250 photos onto flickr the night before.  The upside of being compulsive!

Finished mourning, but then I needed to buy a new camera.  After price shopping a bit I was back in mourning and needed another day to resign myself to the cost.  One thing you cannot get in Thailand  for bargain basement price is a camera.  Bit the bullet and am now back in business but trying to adjust to the differences in the camera (and I was just getting so proud of myself for learning all the cool things my disappeared camera could do.)

To add to the excitement- not to mention keeping you all in the thrall of my blog- I had to deal with a tooth infection.  Amazing how many Thai dentists there are that advertise in English.  Apparently cosmetic dentistry (or dental tourism if you prefer) is a growing business here.  So found a lovely little periodontist in a very nice, clean, upscale looking dental practice and feeling much better.  The main difference between treatment here and at home is having to take off your shoes and put on little slippers before going in for treatment.  Taking off shoes is big here.  Oh yes, much cheaper too.

Still not sure what to eat on the street.  Trying to branch out and only had pad thai once- and that was in the back of a Buddhist temple where I was the only westerner around and I think I was eating with the workers- who were very friendly and seemed to find me amusing.  (Happy to be of help.)  The pad thai came with these itsy bitsy little shrimp (finally, not an oxymoron) which I discovered you pop in your mouth and eat, shell and all.  Also amusing- the Thais eat their food very spicy (very, very) and they know foreigners don’t do well with spicy food, so I end up getting served the blandest Thai food I’ve ever eaten which I then have to spice up significantly.  I guess it’s easier to add spice than subtract it, so I’m not really complaining.

Today I spent the afternoon ferrying up and down the river.  Major mode of transportation here and costs 15 baht (about 50 cents).  All different kinds of boats going up and down (and some just ferrying across)- makes for a beautiful sight.  Definitely don’t want to fall in- the flowing water here is pretty appallingly dirty.

Ended up writing this entry in order to duck inside and out of the rain- along with a million other tourists on Khao San Road with the same idea.  Vendors had their wares covered and the street cleared within about 5 minutes.  Unfortunately it does not appear to have cooled things off much so my next stop is my welcoming air conditioned room where I will try to go to sleep early to be up for my 7 am pickup for the next 2 days (I hate 7 am pickups!)  But I must leave enough time to have the fabulous breakfast that comes with the room.  If I could figure out how to make 1 large meal last the whole day I could eat the equivalent of breakfast, lunch and dinner at the breakfast buffet.  One large buffet table has all of the fun breakfast foods (3 different kinds of eggs, pancakes, french toast, muffins, sausages and different breads), another large buffet table has hot chafing dishes with Thai food (what they eat for breakfast is what we would eat for dinner), and then there is a table with salads and a table with fresh fruits.  Sadly, if I ate a whole day’s worth at one sitting I would undoubtedly toss my cookies and still be hungry by the afternoon.  Too bad.

And that’s the update.  The rain has stopped.  More from northern Thailand.  Keep those stimulating comments coming! 🙂 

Tags: 1, Bangkok, Thailand

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 8:11 am and is filed under 1. 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.