Travel Blogging

Flipping through my photos from Thailand on iphoto last night I came to really regret not having kept up the blog while I was traveling. SO MANY great stories that I'll probably never get around to writing (typing?) down. Now that I know this regret, I'm committing to myself (and you loyal readers) to shoot off a blog entry (however brief) everyday that I'm in Italy. So that you might know what a Thailand travel blog from me might have looked like, I'm going to reprint the email I sent shortly after arriving to let those close to me know I had arrived and what had happened thus far.

Highlights thus far:
Night1: pink taxicab from the airport, tried to charge me 5 baht to smoke in the cab

being wide awake at 3 am looking for a bar when they close at 1 or 2am...end up at a nightclub named "Spicy's" open till 6am, every foreigner we chat with is shocked that we ended up in the hottest underground club on our first night!

drinking ice-cold $6 heinekens and piss warm $7 shots of Jaeger with Michael from Denmark who apropos of nothing starts worshipping my feet right in the club!

Day2: start the day by getting my legs waxed for about $12 we take the skytrain to the weekend market at MoChit. Rob gets $18 Adidas (after I bargain down from $24!) and is thrilled out of his skull. I buy a $6 leather purse to carry while I'm here. One of the zippers has already broken. we hit the mega mall MBK where we get pulled aside by cops who want me to pay a $70 ticket for throwing a cigarette butt on the sidewalk (next to a few others mind you!) I manage to talk my way out of paying the fine. Rob will not let me live it down.

we come back to the hotel & I leave him in the room to go get a massage & mani-pedi. Tell him I'll be back in a couple of hours. Get a kickass "oil massage" for $9. Attempt to get a mani pedi for $14. these chicks are clueless, takes an hour & a half just to do my toes with TWO women working on it. I end up walking out without mani. get back to hotel, rob says "I don't know whether to hug you or punch you, I was so worried."

Walking around town people stare at both of us (I was wondering if it was just our size, we are two pretty big people, but it isn't...), comments so far are about my hair "sooooo beautiful, I touch? color...WOW!" Rob's tattoos are very popular but amazingly enough it is his uber trimmed faceframe/goatee that excites the thais. Men have asked to touch it and how long it took to grow.

We head to patpong the redlight district, hit pingpong show, unfortunately the chick who can write with her vagina is out today but we see ping pong balls, shooting bananas, 50 feet of ribbon, sealed coke bottles get opened, cigarette smoking, a string with razors, another string with needles, flower garlands, darts and probably a few other things shot or pulled from vaginas. It was fun at first but actually got boring. we then were accosted while walking down the street constantly with "pussy!, SUPER PUSSY!"

we bought a tazer on the street. just because we could.

End up eating dinner in the gay district, admiring ladyboys, encounter our first two elephants on the street (but we don't pay to feed, ride or pet them, as we don't condone the abuse, we're gonna go to the santuary later on!)

end up taking a tuk-tuk (crazy scooter taxi) back to the hood.

observations: there is a 7-11 on literally EVERY corner. Bargaining is required, most purchase prices come down by half. burning cash faster than I planned, but I knew bangkok would be more expensive.