The City That Never Sleeps But Wants to Sleep With You.

Hello from Thailand-this place was built for criminals. But before I go throwing around discriminatory slander, I'll explain...
If you go to Bangkok, please note that Bangkok for four days is too much sleaze even for the best of us. I still really love the city itself, and the people are really happy and relaxed; however, we stayed on Koh San road and did everything on Koh San road, and that road is designed to attract all kinds of slimeballs-which was entertaining for two nights, but then it got old. The first night we managed to get into two fights with other foreigners and danced for free cigarellos. Word of advice-if you see a funny looking french guy who looks like puss in boots and you want to capture a photo of him without his permission, he will try to punch you in the face and steal your camera. Luckily, if you are on Koh San road, there will be older men who will jump in there and protect you and then buy you drinks. However, once you realize what the older men are actually after, you will have to flee quickly. At this point, if you happen to play a friendly game of pool with some nice boys from England, they might proceed to get really angry with you when you tell them you teach english in China. They will be appalled and tell you that you can't teach english because you don't speak the queen's english and they will proceed to tell you that all canadians are rum drinking indians. Then you and your friends will flip a few birds, spill a drink, and slink out into the sleazy Bangkok air. If you visit Bangkok-do go to the Mai Tai boxing match, but do not pay full price for seated tickets outside the ring, the place will be empty and you could have paid a quarter of the price for the same seats. If you go to Bangkok, do go see the Red Shirts protest, but make sure you wear red, otherwise people will not want you there. If you go to Bangkok, skip the pingpong show. It is shocking and sad and is much cheaper to hear someone's account of what really goes on with those crazy pingpongs and goodnessknowswhatelse being shot out of a young woman's privates. I can't even write in here what I saw or how I felt, just trust that I had a lump in my throat the whole time.
In short, Bangkok was much crazier than I anticipated and I'm not even sure what to suggest as the most important travel tip for Bangkok outside of "get a fanny pack while you are on Koh San road." You just have to see it to believe it-that place is the wildest place on earth. Holy moly. I'm still shell-shocked.
Time to scoot, tomorrow's entry is entitled: "When you are warned not to do something and you do it anyway-you should be shot: or, How I paid too much money to retrieve my passport."

exes and ohs
Mich