Bangkok

Bangkok is a crazy city. Something like 15 million people live in this city which sprawls seemingly forever. There is a ten lane freeways running underneath an eight or six lane raised freeway (I'm not sure the actual amount of lanes because I never paid the toll to have a taxi drive on it. If one word could describe Bangkok it would be hectic. The traffic never seems to stop no matter what time of day it is and there are people everywhere.

If a second word could be used to describe Bangkok it would be shopping. Bangkokians, or is it Bangkokers?... People who live in Bangkok love to shop. There are shopping malls everywhere catering to all sizes of pocket books. The craziest one I saw was called the Siam Paragon. To give an example of how high end this mall is there is a floor which has car dealerships in it, not the ground floor and not a Ford dealership. There was a Lamborghini, Maserati and Porche dealership there among others! This is in a mall! Who goes to the mall to buy a Lamborghini?!

And for those people who don't like the malls for shopping there are the street markets. Bangkok has a huge night market and a MASSIVE weekend market called Chatuchak. Both are great for bargaining and buying knockoff brand named goods, with varying degrees of quality. The Chatuchak market was cool because it was so huge but it was literally not cool because it of the sweltering heat; I say that within the context of Thailand, and that is a weighty statement to be sure. Some places were so hot that the air felt thick to breathe, sweat just poured off me; attractive mental image I know.

I ended up not even seeing that many tourists sights in Bangkok though I am not sad about it really. I was happier to get acquainted with the public transportation system (which is great) and feel relatively comfortable getting from place to place.

There are always a lot of touristy things to do so sometimes it is nice to just not do them and pretend like you are just living as a person and not a tourist. That being said I did get to one touristy place called Kao San road. This is the popular place to go if you are a backpacker but really there is no reason to go to Kao San unless you really like looking at other backpackers. The street was like a white person Jamboree held in the middle of Bangkok. The only Thais around were there to relieve tourists of their money in exchange for goods and services. Goods in the form of T-shirts, jewelry and burned CDs, Services in the form of food preparation and use your imagination (if you don't have an imagination: Sex). It was worth it to see just for en evening but really no longer than that. I was happier rubbing elbows with rich Thais at Paragon.

On my last night in Bangkok I went to this restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms. It is a restaurant set up by a Thailand Minister of health, his name escapes me, to help increase and raise funds for AIDS awareness. It was a quirky restaurant with condoms all over the place. There were manikins dressed in clothing made of condoms and birth control pills, it was pretty funny, there was even a condom Santa Claus. The food was good and all the proceeds went to AIDS awareness. And if that wasn't enough of an incentive to eat there, men can get free vasectomies at the clinic next door!! I got mine done, so long runny nose... wait, what's a vasectomy?