bangkok, the first morning

so this was my first morning in bangkok. due to the time change etc, i woke up this morning before 8am and couldn’t go back to sleep. i switched hotels this morning and got a room w/ AC. it’s insanely hot here right now. and very very muggy too. after getting the room, i go up a million flights of stairs to my room… and nothing in it works. no lights, no AC, no tv, etc. after going all the way back down to the front desk, it turns out that you need to put your key in this special slot to turn on the electricity.

Mystery Soup

there was a place next door to the hotel selling soup, so i figured, what the hell, let’s try it. i point to the soup, try to look puzzled, and ask “what is it?”. i get the response “you wan soop?”. “ok, but what’s in it?”. “you wan soop?”. i try to enunciate really slowly this time “what… is… inside…. soup”. “you wan soop?”. oh well, i agree to try the soup. i figure this is gonna happen pretty frequently from now on. the mysterious soup ends up having some strange things inside. there’s what i thought was gonna be chicken.. but turned out to be something else tougher (i’ve never eaten pork, but i assume that was it). there is this other thing that looked like chicken.. but ended up not tasting like any kind of meat.. or vegetable for that matter. also, there was a weird white ball. after probing the ball with a chopstick, i decided to not eat it. too scary. it’s funny, back home, i didn’t think i’d be afraid of hardly any kind of food here, but it turns out that pretty much everything here looks kinda weird. i’m definitely down to try some of it.. so we’ll see how it goes. oh yeah, overall, the soup was actually pretty damn good. and it was only 50 cents.

TUK-TUKS From Hell

The main thing to see here in bangkok is the watts. i decided to check that off my list of things to see first. of course i had no idea how to get where i wanted to go. does this city have street signs? cause i don’t think i’ve seen any at all so far. so there are these things called tuk-tuks here. they are these little 3 wheeled golfcart type things. you see them all over the city, and their drivers constantly harass you to go w/ them. i’m telling ya, these people are vicious. they talk to you all smiling, asking where you’re from etc, while they lie to you. the main lie they tell is that wherever you want to go is closed. why is it closed? oh, there’s a million reasons they’ll make up “it’s christmas. today is thai only day. buddhist holiday. closed for a lunch break.” i’ve heard all these excuses.. and i’ve only been here one day. sometimes they pretend to just be random strangers.. start chatting you up, and then all of a sudden “oh, by the way.. my friend has a tuk tuk.. i call him. get you special price”. anyways, as i mentioned before, i’m lost.. so i figure what the heck. i’ll try out this tuktuk, since i’m only in thailand once and i’ll never get to ride one again. trying to reason w/ the driver is insanely ridiculous, but finally i get to where i want to go.

Watts

i went to the Grand Palace, the Watt Phra-kew, and Watt Pho. they were all so amazing!! the first sight you get of them is just so breathtaking. these cool temples glitter like crazy in the sun. i had seen pictures of them before, but nothing really prepared me for how cool they really look. everything is covered in gold and bright colors. i’ve traveled all over europe before and have seen tons of impressive churches, but really they’re all nothing compared to these Watts. i took mad photos, so if i can find a place here that has usb, i’ll upload them. one of the really cool things to see was the reclining buddha. this thing is HUGE. it’s an enormous golden buddha that takes up a whole room. it’s actually 50 yards in length!!

so that’s it for now. it’s about 4ish here… and i’m not really sure yet what i’m gonna do w/ the rest of my day.

-vlad