Bangkok once again

After a little delay at the border...they needed two fewer people and somehow Giuliana and I got bumped to an hour later bus, we made it back to Bangkok.

I have to say, Bangkok (and Thailand as a whole) is something different than what I remember. Much of that has to do with the jet lag on our first go around.

The first thing you notice, well the first thing I noticed because you weren't there, was teh smooth roads. The road from Siem Reap to Poipet is just super, if by super I mean bumpy as all hell. Like spine jarring, ass numbing bumpiness that just doesn't want to stop. Maybe I don't mean super. Then you do all the at the border junk, including having a digital photo taken...I assume so they can put out a WANTED poster really fast if someone checks out of Cambodia but forgets to cross the bridge.

Crossing the bridge, HUGE casinos I must assume cater to a Thai crowd (minimum $2500 bets) and beggars. Ah Cambodia. Then onto the sweet roads of Thailand. Our bus from there to bangkok had a WASHROOM, all the seats weren't even full and well bumps just weren't. The roads and buses of Laos and Cambodia were quickly forgotten.

As we neared Bangkok I began to reminisce about thefirst time I arrived there. The hot hot hot humidity. AIr so thick you could cut it into bricks and make a humidity block igloo that would be warm... damn, metaphors aren't my forte. Anywho, got off teh bus and 23 degrees? I dunno, I'm just guessing. But it was comfortable, so nice. And one of the bus guys just said "winter" and I thought well this is splendid.

Unfortunately with winter comes the high season. ANd guest houses have higher rates and more bookings. We should have gone straight to the place we stayed at the first time...Ranee's and got our lovely 200baht a night double, but we endedf up at a 250 instead and Ranee's is now booked. Oh well.

Walking around on the streets, I couldn't honestly tell you if there are more people, and I dsoubt you even care. We'll have to trust the hotels on this one.

The result of all this. I love Bangkok. Walking around all the happy people, the pirated CD vendors pumping all kinds of music (new, old, etchno, folk, rap, rock and anything else...yes Gill even drum beats played on a stretched cow's stomach), bars out the sides of vans and all teh food vendors.

That's another thing, last time we jsut followed the guidebook a bit too much. Oooh this restaurant is supposed to be scheap, let's go there. Our vendoring consisted of fruit buys. N9ot this time, nuts and fried chicken and sdquids on sticks and yum yum yum yum yum. YUM.

So not to bore you with this anymore. bangkok is WAY better when you aren't jet lagged and you kinda know the city and it isn't 36 degrees constantly, even at night. GREAT!

And for those with interest, in Bangkok the main results of the tsunami are lots of signs asking for blood donations, a benefit concert going on right now, a big charity box at Kho San road and sheets of paper hung on a fence. The papers are updated daily and have details on people missing, dead or injured. There are even a few not so nice pictures of corpses they are trying to identify.