Thai one on

You know that one joke where you ask people (preferably dudes) what the capital of Thailand is and then before they can answer you say "Bangkok" and pretend like you're going to hit them in the crotch?  Well it's a classic and if you didn't know it before, you do now.  So you're welcome.  The reason I shared that extremely classy and tasteful joke is that I'm currently in the punch line city so that gives you a perfect reason to test it out.  Again, you're welcome.

Ok so after talking with several other travelers who had spent some time here, I was fully prepared to be less than impressed with Bangkok.  I tend to prefer nature and small towns over massive sprawling metropolises, but I've actually grown quite fond of this place over the past few days.  Perhaps it had an unfair advantage because it directly followed my time in Ho Chi Minh City.  I can't say that HCMC was my favorite place on earth, as it was hot and dirty and rather depressing.  I spent about a day and a half there and was ready to leave after about 4 hours.  I took a stroll around town during the early evening hours and during that 2 hour span I witnessed the following: an old lady puking in the middle of the street, a senile Australian man talking to no one in particular about how he was in the market for a young boy, a crowd of men gathered around two street dogs getting frisky with each other, and countless gross old white dudes with young naive Vietnamese girls on their wrinkly arms.  So after taking all of that in, I took a hot shower to wash the ick off and booked the next flight out to Bangkok. 

Got into Bangkok around midnight and made my way to my hostel.  It's a bit outside of the main city center, but the public transportation here is great and the hostel is one of nicest I've ever stayed at so two thumbs up.  One thing that makes this hostel so great is the quality of the mattresses.  I dont know if it's an Asian thing or not, but up until this point, all of the places I've stayed have had rock hard mattresses.  They say those are better for your back, but I say shut up.  Anyways, if you're ever in Bangkok you should stay here.  Don't think you'll ever find a nicer place for 10 bucks a night. 

For the past couple of days I've just been exploring the city by foot, train, ferry and tuk tuk.  The other day I visited an area of town called Siam which is famous for it's gigantic shopping malls.  I generally hate malls, but they're dynamite for people watching so I was happy.  Also, in the lower level of one of these malls sits one of the greatest food courts of all time.  Very similar to the hawker centers of Singapore, but slightly bigger.  In addition to that, I also discovered the most impressive grocery store I've ever been to in my entire life.  Not sure if you know this, but I have a weird fascination with grocery stores.  I love lazily strolling around and seeing the weird stuff they have and the going rate for said products.  Anyways, this grocery store was remarkable.  Spotlessly clean, awe-inspiring prepared food area, and an extremely well thought out design.  As if that weren't enough, they had more free samples than I could even taste. Eat your heart out, Costco.  Anyways, I'm a big weirdo so I greatly enjoyed this discovery.  Oh hey, I found a review of this place that describes it in much greater detail than I did, so I guess I'm not the only weirdo: http://www.gourmet.com/travel/2007/11/gourmetmarket

Yesterday I took to the river and took a ferry to do a little siteseeing.  Walked around the grounds of the Grand Palace and then walked a bit down the road to explore Wat Pho, which is a ridiculously impressive Buddhist temple.  It's home to more than 1,000 Buddha statues and is known as the birthplace of Thai massage.  The amount of detail in all the structures was remarkable.  The tile work was crazy and I can't even begin to comprehend how long it must have taken to construct.   Here's cool stuff I've seen recently:

View from the beach in Nha Trang, Vietnam.  This was taken during the 5 minutes that it didn't rain while I was there.  Lame.

This is the only picture I took in Ho Chi Minh.  That was probably dumb of me, but oh well.  This is just your standard dried fish stand at the local market.  It smelled really nice.

Fun fact: Lots of taxis in Bangkok are bright pink and the taxi drivers wear bright pink vests.  Good stuff.

Wandering around some mall and I happened upon a Thai boy band concert.  The girls were going wild for these cats. 

This picture is just to show the junxtaposition between old and new, chaotic and serene.  Temple with an IMAX backdrop.  Life is funny.

The Grand Palace.  I was approached by about 12 different people asking if I wanted a guided tour.  I said no and quickly retreated so I'm not entirely sure what goes on around here, but there were lots of tourists so I assume it's something important.

Just some awesome structures at Wat Pho.  Can't really tell from this picture, but the exterior of all of those are made up of thousands of little tiles.  So I'm sure that didn't take long to complete.

This guy is pretty cool

There were countless hallways like this.  Very serene environment.  Buddhism seems cool.

Prayer candles.  My attempt at being an artsy fartsy photographer. 

I really like this picture

After getting my fill of culture, I took a tuk tuk to Khoa San Road, which is a the epicenter of Bangkok's backpacker scene.  Hippies to the left, transgendered street performers to the right, and an endless array of weirdness in all directions.  Not really a place I would want to stay, but definitely fun for an afternoon.  Walked around, got some delicious 50 cent pad thai, and also visited a few travel agents to do some bargaining for the best price on transport to an island in southern Thailand called Koh Phi Phi (pronounced Co Pee Pee...not quite as funny as dong, but still worthy of a giggle).  So I did some haggling and got round trip bus and ferry tickets for about $40.  So I'll be boarding another sleeper bus this evening and will arrive in Koh Phi Phi around 10:30 tomorrow morning.  Plan from there is to explore some of the beaches and probably do a bit of snorkeling.  Won't have enough time for my scuba certification so that's lame but oh well.  I'll make my way back from Koh Phi Phi on Sunday evening, back in Bangkok on Monday morning and then off to London on Tuesday night.  The hits keep comin!

Just taking some beach clothes and a camera on this latest excursion, so I'll be somewhat off the grid for the next 5 days.  Hopefully I'll have some good stuff to share when I get back.  I think I might.  Keep on rockin in the free world.  Until we meet again....