2/10 - Thanks to Second Secretary Bouaphanh Vongsavanthong for the Visa Lao

So, it appears we have another mysterious commenter, this time writing about blood clots. I highly doubt that this is the same person who wrote the maiden comment #2, but perhaps we'll never know. Yes, as you mention Randy, I believe there may be some comment confusion going on. But I suppose it doesn't really matter. Who reads this blog and is in contact with Aubrie's departing roommates and/or landlord though? I can't begin to fathom it. And what's this about blood clots?, I can't even imagine. Are thirteen-year old children doing this for fun now, reading blogs and commenting with non-sequiturs? Oh well....

Lao/Laos looks like it will really happen. We picked up our passports with visas for the Lao PDR in them yesterday, and they look legit, stamped by the above named man. Of course, because nothing can ever be 100% worry-free out here, the part where it should list the duration of stay allowed doesn't list anything. But the woman insisted it was all well and good, that now they've begun issuing only 30-day visas so there was no need to specify the duration. I trust her maybe 60%, which is good enough. We catch the bus tonight at 19:30. The people at the shitty hotel we found for the last two nights were good enough to let us leave our big packs there after check-out, so that we could wander about Bangkok free of burden for the day. The other hotel ended up being fully booked, so we called a place that sounded okay despite the name, Charlie House, at random and they had rooms so we just went there. Unfortunately I do believe we were given the worst room in the place, on the 5th (top) floor, no elevator, no window, and dingy brown decor. They insisted it was the only room. We didn't buy that, but what could we do? We paid our 540 Baht per night because we had little choice about it. I was happy to find a room. As it's Chinese New Year week, every place in the city seems to be full. For a while there I thought we'd be wandering around Bangkok for 48 hours without a bed. Then we would have been real backpackers....The hotel was not without it's humor though--on every landing going up there's a nature painting on the wall, but on our floor this was replaced by one of those posters of South American women in thong bikinis facing away, with parrots drawn on their bodies. Also, a sign on the ground floor dictated that "a visitor is allowed to your room for a charge of 100 Baht." Presumably this is the "you can have a prostitute in the room but we'd like a little money for it" charge.

You constantly see older Western men here with young Thai girls. Do they hire them out for the day or something? It's kind of sickening to watch, mostly because it seems to be such a standard practice. It's such a cliche that men would come here to sleep with Thai prostitutes that I can hardly believe it still actually happens. Then again perhaps not all the ones I see are cases of prostitution. Maybe Thai girls just like balding men from Europe. Who knows?

Walking on Thanon Silom the other night a guy flashed me a card in the palm of his hand which read "CD Sex." Just what I was looking for! There were many others doing the same with less imaginative cards, and they would lead people down dark alleys by the hand. I can't quite imagine being interested in CD Sex enough to go along with that.

Bangkok continues to be a place I like. If it had a more extensive transportation system it would be even better. There's an above-ground Skytrain which is five years old, as well as one subway line which just opened recently I believe. They're very modern, quick, and cheap. Traffic is so bad that even though taxis are cheap, we've been trying to take public transport whenever possible. This is also good because I have a fear of taxis ever since Indonesia. Yesterday we wanted to go to the old part of town, which is not reached at all by either transport method, so we took the Skytrain to the river, where you can catch a river taxi. These were good fun, and at 8 Baht per ride very cheap. They cruise along the river and stop at points along the way. The river isn't exactly nice and clean but the urban mess leading right up to and hanging over the water's edge was interesting to see. We took it up to where Wat Pho is. That's one of the bigger temple complexes in the area, and also features the massive, gold-covered reclining buddha, stretching maybe a hundred feet long (I could be exagerating slightly) and thirty feet tall. Otherwise, it was nice to walk around amidst the statues and buddhas tucked away in every corner, and see that impressive building style, where the edges and corners stretch up to sharp points, and ornate, incredibly detailed designs cover everything.

Meanwhile, I don't know what the story is exactly with the "s" at the end of "Laos." I've heard it pronounced as "Lao" mostly, by Thais, Brits, and Australians. Supposedly the "s" was added by the French at some point. But I don't know what the true pronunciation is supposed to be.

I must mention also that at the end of the Skytrain line by the river, at the Saphan Taksin stop, we glimpsed a most terrifying edifice. Chances are I won't be able to get across why the thing was so scary to see, but I'll try to explain. It was a massively tall building, maybe 50 stories, designed in a colonial-type of way so that every window had a balcony with white columns as guard rails. It was the sort of thing you might see on a three-story British mansion. Somehow the fact that there were thousands of these balconies cluttering all sides of the thing caught our attention, but there was more to it. You see, as you went up the floors, the columns got less and less white gradually, so that by about halfway up they were starting to be grey, the color of the concrete. The top third of the building became irregular in shape, jutting out and inward seemingly randomly, and at the very top, Rebar (that's the steel that reinforces concrete, as covered previously) jutted out from the thing at all points. The effect, if you're having trouble imagining it, was somewhat like seeing a "ghost mansion," but with the proportions of a skyscraper. It felt like gargoyles would come alive and come streaming from it at any moment. And I can guarantee that there were headless ghouls roaming the hallways, no doubt about it. It looked much like something out of a bad dream, or a Disneyland theme park, which my father might argue is about the same thing.

Also, I neglected to explain the "Krung Thep" in the title a couple of posts ago. That's the local name of Bangkok, and actually it's short for a massively long name that I dare not try to write out here. It would stretch for several lines. So people tend to call the place Krung Thep, whereas the rest of the world uses "Bangkok."

I feel that I might be making these posts a bit too long, but there's so much to talk about out here. Overall, Thailand feels friendlier than any of the previous countries. The feeling here is good, even when it should be bad, considering how noisy and smoggy this city is. The sprawl of it reminds me of Tokyo. There are a few tall buildings but nothing so ostentatious as in KL or Hong Kong, and mostly it's just concrete, lifeless mid-rises with ads all over them. And yet, whereas Tokyo makes me feel like I'm going to suffocate, Bangkok does not. You might argue that at this point I'm actively looking to like a place I've travelled to, so my feelings for Thailand might be exagerated. It can be disheartening to travel and find yourself wanting to move on every time you reach a place which sounded so good during the planning stage. This is what most of Indonesia and Malaysia felt like. Either way, I can't wait to see what the rest of Thailand, and Laos, is like.

The packs are a little on the heavy side, but I maintain that this is Aubrie's fault, because at every airport book store she buys a new book, and it's usually a while before we get a chance to post things back. Speaking of which, dad, did the small box from Hong Kong arrive? Did I mention that we sent a bigger box from Singapore? As for the packs though, mine is great. I can comfortably carry the weight for long periods. Aubrie's bag is giving her a lot of trouble. We can't figure out why it isn't working properly, distributing the weight too heavily to the shoulders, whereas most of it should be on the hips. Either we're doing something wrong or the bag sucks. In any case, that's become a problem because whereas I would prefer to walk a kilometer or two if we have to (in fact I kind of enjoy the pain of walking with the pack, when it does start to hurt, as it's that sore-muscle variety of pain) usually it's impossible with Aubrie's bag the way it is. Overall though, even though my bag is manageable at its current weight, I think I could have brought less and been fine. But I'll report more on that at the conclusion of the trip hopefully.

Will report next from Vientiane, Laos.