Middle East 08

As my time in Bangkok comes to a close, I am anxious and sad to leave. The next week will be tough, as the “travel” part of travel always is, but at least I’m getting to see more and more of the world’s airports.

Bangkok has been great as always.  We’ve been taking advantage of much more public transportation, and seeing much more of this city than a typical (read wealthy) tourist.  Yesterday, we were on our way back from the Siam Center, and a guy on a bus kept looking at us and speaking in Thai, and we thought he was kind of crazy.  It was clear to him and everyone on the bus that we didn’t understand him, which prompted him to add hand gestures that also didn’t translate.  After a half hour (rush hour) ride, it became clear that he was telling us how long until our stop, and how to get to our place once we got off.  What a nice guy!

Josh and I were joined by some friends – Josh’s buddy from LA and a friend of ours from NH (go Dorner!) who was on our program in Israel.  It’s been really nice with the new additions.  Yesterday we took a boat ride down the river and jumped on a SkyTrain with no real destination, but found ourselves kind of wandering around and enjoying the views.

Embarrassed, I admit that last night we went to the Patpong (red light) district to take in a Ping Pong show.  We all went with a girl from Australia that Dorner had met on a trek, and set off for the adventure.  The shows are actually pretty disgusting and really sad, although it’s incredible what some Thai women (and former men) can do with their body parts.  I’ll leave it at that. It’s probably a blessing that photography is not allowed. 

Tomorrow is the end of this part of the tour.  We will take the bus to the airport, take a flight to India, spend the night there, then fly to Qatar and spend the day.  We fly at night from Qatar to Jordan,  and spend the night there, in Amman.  Friday morning, we will wake up at the crack of dawn to catch the bus to the border by Jerusalem, where we will cross on foot back into Israel.  We then take a sherut to Jerusalem, then a bus to Tel Aviv, where we can once again kick it by arguing about the price of everything, enjoy some hummus, say goodbye to some favorite places and people, and commence the journey home.  I’m not sure if I will have internet anymore, but I’m sure there will be some great stories from the travels home, which will eventually be blogged, possibly accompanied by some pictures.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 12:59 pm 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.