First: I hate it when it rains here. Take a country full of the some of the least spatially aware people you’ve ever met, give them all an umbrella and it’s like a gameshow where the only prize is losing an eye.
Second: We’ve been putting off discussing vacation largely because it entails work, something we have no shortage of. Between personal projects and work-projects we run a busy little hive. Nonetheless! Here we go. At the end of everyday I took 5 or 10 minutes to write down a bunch of keywords that I later assumed would rouse the memories from my brain. Looking over these lists I am about 60% correct.
Most of these pictures come from Mary’s camera and some of them are weird sizes because I’m nabbing them from Facebook and not Flickr. I’ll have the rest of the pictures up this week sometime.
Today’s words:
College/Mos Eisley: Bangkok is 50% frat party and 50% Mos Eisley cantina, which is to say that you’re either getting drunk or getting swindled. There was a bar called “We Don’t Check ID” and literally dozens of fake ID vendors, some who advertised in neon. Fake student IDs, fake drivers licenses, fake TEFL certificates. Kids between 2 and 5 watch you tap out your pin number on the ATM and the scurry off to parts unknown. And if they’re not trying to rip money out of your pocket, the ATM fee was a flat $5 everywhere we went. Drinks come in buckets. Beer comes in long, tall keg-like non-kegs. We were only in Bangkok for about 12 hours and we never saw it in daylight. I’m willing to accept the idea that the rest of it is quite nice, although our experience at the border more or less reinforced what we learned here.
Beer: I have no idea what this means. We drank some, but not a lot. I caught a cold on the plane and getting drunk was priority #415.
Josh Dances:When we finally found a hostel with an open room we bumped into an amiable, tubby little hippie. His name was Josh. Josh kept telling us that money was evil and insisted on paying for everything. Later, he stripped naked and danced in the street.
Rich South African: At some point Josh befriends a South African who is dressed in a variety of gold and diamond jewelry. He lets us try it on like we’re at a costume party. I can’t remember the guy speaking a word of English, just that he appeared to be rich and probably, maybe dangerous, although THAT’S RACIST.
Food:We ate a little bit. Some kind of pancake made from a dough that looked like latex, tossed over a smoking grill, folded and dosed with condensed milk and bananas. Later, pad thai for a dollar from a guy on the street with a flair for cooking theater. One of my favorite things about cheap food in Thailand is the little basket of condiments that accompanies any meal: Usually a spicy vinegar or oil, sometimes peanuts and almost always sugar. Sugar in savory meals is a secret pleasure.
Air Thai : I guess I mean Thai Air? Flying anywhere outside the United States is always a delight, but Asian airlines tend to go the extra mile. They’ll pour you as much liquor, gratis, as you dare ask for and the food isn’t so bad, either. We accidentally matched our seats which is cute and unfortunate.
So, anyway, we got a little drunk and it got really late and we’d been up for like 22 hours and we went to sleep when everything got too loud and we woke up in the dark again to catch a train to the Cambodian border, but that’s Day 2.
Tomorrow’s words: AM Train/Border, ATM, Tuk-Tuk/Crossing, Max, 3 hours/Taxi, eating, fights/MoHome,River,Food
