Same same, but different

With a name like that, you know it's quality you can trust!

Greetings everyone!

Sarah and I made it safe into Thailand. We arrived in Bangkok a couple of days ago after a long and rather complicated bus ride from Sihanoukville. The bus companies there were selling direct to Bangkok tickets, so we did a little research and decided that trying to piece together that route ourselves wouldn't be that much cheaper than buying a direct ticket. We stupidly assumed we were going to ride the bus all the way into Bangkok, with a stop for border formalities, but it turned out that the bus took us to the border, where we had to wait around for almost 2 hours for everyone to get through immigration. Then they loaded us in mini-vans and we took off to Trat, about an hour down the road. Once in Trat, they loaded us into different mini-vans, and this one took us to Pattaya, where we dropped off most of the passengers. By the time we actually were heading into Bangkok, there were only three of us left!

Anyway, it's good to be here now. We were somewhat dreading arriving in this huge city, but it turns out that it is easy to navigate and has some "Western" conveniences that make it a more friendly city to be in (like 7/11 convenience stores, for example). The guide book talks of gridlock traffic and chaos, but that hasn't been our experience yet on the Skytrain, buses, or walking. 'Course, tomorrow is Monday.... so we'll see if that holds true during the work week.


Khao San Road, Bangkok


Pad Thai on the street - one dollar.

Our first hotel was a hotter-than-hades hole-in-the-wall place on Khao San Road, the main backpacker and tourist district in the city. It was fine for a night because it meant we didn't have to lug our packs in search of a place after 14 hours on the bus. The next night we moved to a new place (thankfully) a little farther from the action. Our new place, Riverline Guesthouse, has a view over the river and a great location in a small neighborhood -- for the same price as the crappy place! Khao San Road itself was a trip. It is THE place to go if you need fake IDs or documents, from diplomas to notary public stamps to drivers licences - they have it all. There is also a brisk trade in cheap, tasty Pad Thai, t-shirts, hair extensions, and pretty much anything else that a traveller might not realize he or she needs.


Along the river in Bangkok


A cool fort near our guesthouse.

The following couple of photos are of our second night in Bangkok, when a major downpour started at dinner time and didn't stop until early in the morning. Of course, it was the one night I didn't bring my umbrella. Sarah had hers, but she still got pretty wet getting back to the guest house.


Night market scene. Rain starting. Good, cheap eating.


The rain is coming down!


Hiding out under a canopy.

Today we spent a great day out on the town figuring out the local buses and checking out the markets. We went to the big Weekend Market, which apparently attracts 200,000 people a day! It wasn't at all what I was expecting. I was expecting chaos, bad smells, and pressing crowds (like normal). Instead of this we got coffee booths, good smells, and areas that felt like you were shopping at Pier One Imports. With the overcast skies overhead, the market wouldn't have been out of place in Seattle or Portland.


Sarah with her fish ball curry soup and huge amounts of fresh greens to put into the hot liquid.

Buddha's feet, Wat Pho

I had a mission today. I needed to get one of the big malls where they might be able to repair my camera, which has been out of commission for almost a month. So we took the Skytrain to the big commercial district, and were dumped squarely in a place so far removed from the reality of most of our trip (especially Laos), that it was hard to get ours mind around. Admittedly, it was fun to spend some time in an air-conditioned mall like you might find in large American cities. They even had a Dairy Queen! Actually, two of them. We found the Sony store, where the employee took one glance at my camera, found some new batteries, turned it on.... and it was fixed.... I was pretty embarrassed about that one. In my defense, I had checked it with my other batteries, but they were the same Lithium type I had in the camera in the first place. He told me to switch back to Alkaline and that should work. I hope he's right. Now I'm back in business with my camera though. =)


My Green Tea with Almonds Blizzard from Dairy Queen.

The other thing I really wanted to do was go to a movie. It had been a couple months, and we were in a place with a huge theater, so we went to the new Batman movie. It was awesome! It was also fun to be in a theater in Thailand because after many (many) commercials and previews, everyone in the theater stood up for the Thai National Anthem while they showed pictures of the king. Pretty fun!

Sarah and I have our big 2 year anniversary tomorrow. It's pretty amazing how fast that time has gone. We're going to pamper ourselves a little, maybe take a dinner cruise, maybe get some chocolate cake somewhere. Whatever we do, it will be nice to celebrate this milestone. The fact that we still totally enjoy being around each other this much after two months of traveling is a great sign.

Alrigthy. Off to bed. Hope everyone is well. I'll write again in a couple days, once we figure out the gameplan for our remaining couple weeks before our flight to Nepal.

Later!
-Matt!