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Thailand - Bangkok

The flight was rather uneventful, near 19 hours in the air and 10 hours in layovers. We departed 7:30 pm on the 13th and arrived 10:30 am on the 15th. Thai
customs was the easiest I ever experienced. Our cab ride from the Thai airport (the old one) to our air conditioned room above the May Kaidee's restaurant
was $400 bt ($13 Canadian) including the driver tip. Our room was $400 Bt/ night. $33 Bt to the Canadian dollar.

May Kaidee's restaurant is a vegitarian restaurant. My guide and brother, Murray, was greeted with warm hugs and friendly excited verbal exclamations, most
of the language exchange was in Thai so it was up to the body language to tell me how close Murray and these people have become over the many years of
his visiting Thailand. Introductions were made and I was accepted as if a part of the family.

The air on the streets is thick with vehicle exhaust, it's smell is mixed intermitently with the offensive smell of sewer. The sewers drain from business and
residence alike via pipes into a covered drain ditch which runs to an open sewer system covered by tiles about a ffot square which form the sidewalk. The
paved roads have puddles of water on them most of the time both from evening showers, roof runoff and unknown sources. There are far more cats and
dogs than I expected.

The food has been great and is available from restaurants and street vendors alike. The typical meal at this rooming house is $10 Bt (bowl of brown rice) to
$50 bt or $1.50 for the more adventurous vegetarian meals and is even cheaper from the street vendors. Murray did some fine camera work of May Kaidee's
meals which are incorporated as part of their menu.

Our bathroom is significantly different from what we are used to back home. The use of toilet paper is frowned upon and will clog the sewer drains from the
residence to the streets below. So water is used to wash "one's back side", as John Hogan so delicatley stated in his first Crocodile Dundee movie.

The main bathroom has water available from two sources. One being a tap over a three gallon pale which, when partially full, can be manipulated so as to
pour the water into ones hand and then provide effective flow direction. The second is similar to the flexible hose similar to the hose your kitchen sink has to
enable direction and pressure control. Our shower has only one tap and the water flows at near air temperature which has not dropped below 29 degrees
Celcius since our arrival. Both facilities are down the hall from our room and are shared with other guests.

Last evening I took the cooks, three Thai females, out for dinner and dancing. The style of music played has a specific name, which I can't recall at this time,
and is very similar to techno music. My style of dancing is different from most and is totally different to the rythmic almost belly dancing done by everyone
here. Several of the men kept getting in my face trying to copy my dance style till I gave them a dance lesson.

The women present at the club were very representative of the Thai female populace being very easy on the eyes and for the most part near 5 foot tall. Very
few Thai people are overweight. The women I was with are part of "THE CREW". The crew being all the people that work the restaurant / rooming house.
The crew are strictly friends and they much enjoyed a meal someone else prepared and the dancing. One elderly lady, still very easy on the eyes, did a touch
dance (swing dance) with me and before the end of the night she had placed a long natural flower lai around my neck. This made me the only person
dancing in a sweat soaked bright yellow Cycle L A t-shirt with a bright yellow lai hung doubled around my neck so I stood out even more than being the only
foreigner in the club.

I ordered a Whisky and they delivered a 350 ML bottle to the table. The waitresses were a buzz the entire evening delivering 26 Oz bottles. A 26 of whisky
costs approximately $250 BT ($8). The entire evening for the four of us including cab fare to & from and two large rice bowls and a seafood soup shared by
the crew and I was under $1,000 bt ($33). The bathroom was not unusual except for the towel, soap, hand towel person seated inside the bathroom with full
view of all goings on in front of her and on the full wall mirror covering the width of the room, was female.

No matter where one travels there are always the horror stories that come from trusting traveler. One of the guests in our building staggered down the stairs
and nearly fell on the table across form us while we were eating brunch. At first we thought he was drunk untill he told his story. A story of waking in the
hospital a couple of days ago as a result of being drugged by a couple people he hooked up with to do a hike with. They took his identity & his money and left
to be found by some other hikers. This unfortunate soul was still unable to keep food down and was shaky from the drugs and hospital experience. Murray
went across the street and picked up some electrolite drink mixes for this fellow and another traveller bought him a fruit drink to sip on helped him to his
room. Later we discovered this person to be a drunk and it is likely he lost control prior to being drugged.

Today we went downtown to special market to pick up an electrical cord with a surge protector as Thailand is wired with 220 not our 110 and our room has
only two prong receptors and we need a three prong receptor for the laptop surge protector. This market was about half a city block long and wide and 5
floors high with every floor being 90% computer gadgetry of every possible description. Computer stuff here is priced very close to what it is in Canada. We
utilised the walkie talkies to relocate each other when I stopped to take the only picture I have of the main floor, taken from the second floor, of this building
and thus separated us.

Gasoline here is near $24 bt or $0.90 Can per liter. Makes one wonder how the 40 minute cab ride from the airport to our room was only $400 bt or $13
dollars including a $20bt tip for the driver.

The only river I have seen so far is so polluted it has a metalic shean to it. Murray says they still catch and eat the fish out this 100 foot wide river.