No place like it

I'm here, I'm home and reunited with the dog and 70-degree temperatures. I didn't have a chance to tell you about the visit to the pearl farm or the snake farm or the gibbon center (farm), or my nutty snorkel trip or the entertainment on the night bus ride back to Bangkok, or tons of other things. There's just not enough space or time!

Thanks so much for following along on my adventures. I'll look forward to seeing y'all soon.

Monsoon snorkel

Pearl farm

Collector

I am collecting straws. Every time you buy a bottle of water or a soda, the server or person behind the counter at the 7-11 hands you a straw. If it's a nice restaurant you may get a bendy straw but in no case would you want to use the straw since it's not in a wrapper and handled by god knows how many hands. So I've got quite a stash.

I am collecting photos of spirit houses. While most Thais are Buddhist (and an increasing proportion are Muslim as you head further south), animism still holds some clout. Buildings of all sorts have a spirit house - a bit like a miniature temple - located at some auspicious place outside the establishment. The spirit house provides a place for the spirits of the site to live so that they don't have to live with you. Keeping the spirits happy with decorations and flowers, food and beverages, ensures that they will not bother you; your business will prosper, your family will be healthy, etc. If things start to go wrong in your life, you can call in a specialist to examine your spirit house and make corrections.

I am collecting tan lines. The sun has finally overcome my spf 40 sunblock and my skin's getting dark and red, particularly in those inconvenient places like the part in my hair and the middle of my back.

I am collecting unique spellings of English words. Thai letters look absolutely nothing like our good old Roman alphabet and in addition to the 24 consonants (which is similar enough to our own number - 21), there are 27 vowels. Plus four different tones - rising, falling, flat and high. Therefore, it just isn't possible to directly translate the spelling of words and there seems to be any number of ways the same word could be spelled. For instance, my guidebook may refer to Rajamda street while the map shows Rachamta street and the street sign is Rachampa street. I quickly learned to ignore the spelling and goes with "sounds like" when looking for anything specific. Because this is a pretty touristy place there are signs advertising any number of things in English and the charming little spelling weirdnesses appear there. Lage wax. Bikine Store. Seafoof. Grass noodles. Bef. French fride. Banana spitt.

I am collecting bug bites. Though not as many as you might expect given the geography.

I am collecting sounds. I'm surprised to find that of all five senses, hearing is the one most stimulated here. I hear crickets and frogs when I walk at night. The waves crashing on the beach as I read a book. Tuk tuks and their drivers yelling "tuk tuk" "tuk tuk tuk" as I pass by. Songbirds of all sorts absolutely everywhere. Elephants bellowing on the path. Christmas music while I get a foot massage. Sizzling woks as I wait for food. Gibbons hooting in the forest.

I am collecting a beer belly. While beer and alcohol of every sort seems to be consumed primarily by tourists, there's no place to go that doesn't offer a big bottle of Singha beer to go along with your day. The perfect complement to any meal and the best relief for a hot day in the sun.

Mouth

Mouse shit peppers

It's taken me a while to write about Thai food primarily because it's just been so different from what I expected. Thai food is plentiful in Seattle and there must be 12 Thai restaurants within a half mile of my house. I've had lots in my day and planned to come to Thailand and order my favorite dishes and set my mouth on fire on the hot peppers (the most common of which is actually called "mouse shit pepper) and chilis.

But farang - white people - can be spotted a mile away and when one orders Thai food they must remove all hot things completely out of the kitchen and down the road before preparing your food. I imagine plenty of Thai cooks have been frustrated over the years by farang who can't handle the heat. But without the tongue-numbing spiciness, the food's just not as good. So a typical exchange at a restaurant might go:
Me: Hmmm, does the pahd kee mao come with beef?
Waiter: Ohhh, pahd kee mao. That is so spicy!
Me: That's okay. I'll have the pahd kee mao with chicken.
Waiter: The pahd see iew - that isn't so spicy.
Me: Yes, that looks good too. But I'd like the pahd kee mao with chicken. Spicy is okay.
Waiter (dubiously): Pahd kee mao with chicken?
Me: Yes.
Food arrives. It has zero spice and thus little flavor.

It's also been difficult to tell exactly what my favorite dishes on the menu are. While I'm used to ordering pahd see iew and tom yum goong, I'm not sure what the English translation of those dishes are - and the menu generally sports the Thai name in Thai characters or the English translation. Pahd see iew is thick noodles with a sweet soy-based sauce and broccoli. So on the menu, it might be listed as "noodle with sweet sauce" or "thick noodle with broccoli" or "stir fried noodle with soy sause" and there's not a whole lot to distinguish it from the next item on the menu listed as "Thick noodle with sweet sauce".

Finally, the food always seems to defy expectation. Order pahd kee mao - noodles with basil - and it may come without noodles. Order a banana pancake and it may be the best tasting pancake cooked with bananas you've ever had or it could be a fried (with oil, then margarine, then more oil) crepe folded around some bananas. Order a spicy salad with pork - which you might expect to be the typical Thai spicy papaya salad topped with some pork - comes as a mix of three different kinds of processed meat with some onion thrown in.

By now you may have noticed that I haven't strayed too far off the beaten path when it comes to food. I've been a little worried about trying food from the ubiquitous stands for sanitary reasons as well as a complete inability to determine what anything is. I have gotten a few things that looked like they'd been fried or steamed to oblivion and then it's kind of fun to bite into the thing. It could be sweet or savory, it may hold bean paste or spicy chicken or something you can't really identify even after having a few bites. I generally get something and tentatively take a bite or two. Hmm, this is pretty good. Then a couple more bites and I run into something crunchy. Well it tasted kind of sweet, so maybe it was some sort of egg and the crunchy bit is egg shell? Another bite. Or maybe it's not supposed to be crunchy? Another bite. Or maybe it's something mixed into the sweet thing and - oh my god, it must be a bug! They must have added grasshopper or cockroach! And then I can't eat any more of what's probably a perfectly good bun. Of some sort.

But I have been lucky enough to eat at some good restaurants of the spare-the-farang-no-pain variety. And even better, I took a cooking class in Chiang Mai where I learned to make a number of the dishes myself and could add just as many mouse shit peppers as I could stand. So I may not be able to boast that I've had some of my favorite Thai food ever while I was here, but I plan to go home and learn to make it.

Koh Phi Phi

DUM duh duh duh DUM, dum dum dum...

My favorite James Bond in the end...

It's difficult to write updates when I haven't been doing much, but after a couple of lazy days on the beach, plus a trip into Phuket town to pick up a few more used books (I'm averaging one a day - it's heaven!), I finally roused myself to get out on a tour. They picked me up at the hotel this morning for the "007 tour" (which here in Phuket is called the "zero zero seven" tour) and I met the other folks who would be along for the ride. Now I haven't met many Americans this trip, but when we stopped at the next hotel a guy climbed into the van who wound up being from Bellevue! He's also traveling solo and also just going back to school for a new degree and also worked on some Dept of Defense IT stuff (I did that too by the by) and also has completely different politics so we had a lot to chat about. After being on my own for the past couple of weeks, it was fun to have a long conversation with someone about anything, but particularly about coffee and he knows of a Starbucks on the island here! I'm off on a hunt for it tomorrow.

The first stop on the tour was to a cave temple where natural caves have been turned into religious places (as opposed to Turkey where man-mad caves were used as temples). It housed a reclining Buddha, though not as big as the one in Bangkok of course, and a lot of bats. There's also some wild troop of monkeys that live around the cave and have become dependent on the 20-baht bananas that tourists buy to feed them. I took some pictures, but every time I looked at their little monkey faces I saw herpes virus B and ebola and other creepy crawlies, so I kept my distance.

Next we went to an elephant show and rubber demonstration which weren't really connected, but while I wasn't very interested in seeing the elephant show, the rubber demonstration was neat. Rubber is the #1 export from Phuket and rubber trees are grown all over the place. The guides demonstrated how trees are scored to release sap which is collected in a hanging coconut (sounds very Gilligan's Island, doesn't it). The sap is mixed with a couple of things which make it gel and then it gets put through the wringer - three of them actually - and hung out to dry. Over two weeks in the sun it goes from white to yellow to brown, which is when it's shipped to a factory for more processing and then sold internationally to companies who will use it for tires or toys or condoms.

The elephant show was different from what I'd seen before and two young elephants played the harmonica and walked on two feet and performed other assorted tricks. The final trick was having one elephant "massage" a volunteer. They had the person lie face down on the ground, put a grimy looking cloth over their butt and lower back and then had the elephant step all over the person while playing the harmonica. When the massage was finished the elephant gave the person a very noisy kiss with her trunk. A number of different tourists volunteered for this - not me - and for the last "come on, one more volunteer; a special massage", they dragged the guy from Bellevue, protesting all the way, into the ring. They had him lie down on his back this time...which had him a little concerned but probably not as much as he should have been. He was covered with the cloth and the elephant started stepping on him. So far so good, but things quickly took a turn for the worse. One of the handlers must have dropped a handfull of peanuts under the guy's groin and the elephant started looking for these with her trunk. And looking. And looking. You could tell the guy was at a complete loss for what to do - elephant foot on his stomach, elephant trunk in his crotch, 30 people watching all this, his options were pretty limited. It soon ended and the elephant's by now sloppy kiss landed on his lips. This was his first experience with elephants in Thailand...and I'm guessing it may just be his last as well.

So we went to the local dock and took a long-tail boat (I'll have to post a picture) to a village that's up on stilts for lunch. The village is all Muslim and has its own mosque and school. They have to bring water and electricity from the mainland, but otherwise it looks pretty self-sustaining. I wandered around their streets (though it's probably more accurate to say docks) and was fascinated by the birds they kept there. There were a lot of bird cages hanging in the house eaves. The only type I could identify were the turtledoves, but there was a really wide variety including something that looked like some type of eagle. I guess if you live in the middle of the ocean, you have to bring in your own songbirds?

Next we took the boat out to an area dotted with rocky islands (the result of ancient volcanoes, I later learned) that have little grottoes and caves throughout them. We transferred to 3-man sea canoes and were paddled from place to place, at some points lying flat on the raft so we could fit under whatever rock loomed over us.

The final stop on the tour, and the point of the name, in case you were wondering about that, was JamesBond Island. Back in 1974, they filmed portions of a Bond movie there (10 points to whoever can name that movie!) and the Thais officially changed the name from "Nail" Island to "JamesBond" - all one word - Island. I don't remember enough of the movie to know what the significance to Bond was, but that really didn't matter. We got to take in the beautiful scenery, hike around the rocks, marvel at the size of the cliffs, and bask in the warm Thai sun as we considered our luck to be at this place in the world on such a lovely day.

Fruity drink

Tropical paradise

Sawadee-ka from my new favorite place ever: Phuket! Seriously, I don't know what the *#$$! I was doing mucking around up north for so long when there were palm trees and beaches waiting for me here. I had a rough time getting to Mae Hong Son (not pictured in the photograph below: the nightmare bus ride, ants in the hotel room, lack of tours, etc) and was happy to get back to Bangkok (by plane) yesterday and then to Phuket (by plane) today.

When you mention to someone who's been to Thailand that you're thinking about going to Phuket, they generally curl their lip and say something snarky about tourists in speedos or bastardized culture or prostitutes or etc. It went pretty quickly from being an unspoiled island paradise to a capitol of tourism to the nightmare of discotheques and "massage parlors" that it is today. But Phuket's a big island - about the size of Singapore - and there are lots of wonderful places to visit that aren't overtaken with neon. I'm staying at the lovely Karon beach which does have its strip of restaurants and bars, but is mostly just beautiful empty beach and warm salty water.

Phuket was hit by the tsunami last year, though Karon didn't sustain as much damage as other beaches. There is a lot of new construction occurring on the road that parallels the ocean, but whether this is due to damage or just an opportunity to further development I can't say since plenty of older buildings are still standing on that same road. The biggest impact you can see here is the lack of tourists. It's really quite sad; there's just nobody here. It is the low season which plays a part, but everyone I talked to earlier in my trip was planning to head to the islands on the Eastern side of Thailand (Phuket's on the West) which weren't so affected by the tsunami. Here the guesthouses and restaurants have loads of bargains - I'm staying in the nicest hotel so far and it's about $5 a night - and bars are all empty. This is great news for me, but not so much for the economy here. So get thee to Phuket! You won't regret it.

I plan to do a lot of nothing while I'm here and may not be on the blog regularly. If you wonder what I'm doing, just picture a sandy beach, chair massage, ocean, book, fruity drink and you'll probably be right.

And don't worry Dad - they've got a tsunami warning system in place now so I'll have an hour or two to get out of the way.

Mae Hong Son 

Mom, apparently

Weather report

It crossed my mind that I haven't yet commented on the weather here, which is surprising given the fact that it's on my mind from minute to minute. Bangkok was hot, but the heat isn't as bad as the humidity which is a killer. I think I'm damp from head to toe from the second I step outside until...well, Seattle maybe. It's a bit funny how shiny I am in all of my pictures, but I guess I couldn't really tell if it was due to the sweat or the sunscreen or the bug spray. I'm positively lacquered over here.

No rain in Bangkok during the day, but Chiang Mai has been a different story. They had a big flood here recently with 2 m of rain filling the streets. I was warned in Bangkok against coming here now, but it is the rainy season and some's to be expected, right? An hour after I arrived in Chiang Mai the skies opened up and there was a real downpour which lasted for a couple of hours and left streets in floods and me soaked from head to toe. That's been the status quo here - really hard rain for a couple of hours each day and then things dry up. After the first day I wised up to the benefits of sitting out the storms so I haven't gotten caught in the rain since then.

I had planned to go to Pai, a town Northwest of here which is small and lovely. Before the flood a couple of weeks ago anyway. The town got swamped and a lot of the guesthouses and bungalows washed away when the river flooded so word on the street is that there's a lot of mud and smelly stuff in the town. Plus, the bus to Pai was sold out today, so I'm going to try to get to Mae Hong Soon instead. It's not shown on the map I've posted, but if you follow the white line that goes Northwest of Chiang Mai to the border of Burma, Mae Hong Soon is near the border. It's been described as "The Switzerland of Thailand" and I'm looking forward to small town life and cooler weather for a change.

View from Doi Suthep (Chiang Mai)

Mahout (rhymes with zoot) suit

Elephants! I left Chiang Mai yesterday and traveled by bus about 60 km out of the city to attend amateur mahout training at the Thailand Elephant Conservatory. The only place of its kind in Thailand, the conservatory retrains elephants who can no longer work in logging (logging is now illegal in Thailand), has a large elephant hospital, and keeps elephants who have nowhere else to go.

My day started with a late arrival on the bus. I walked into the office and was handed a mahout suit and told to change quickly, very quickly! We walked out to the show ground and I met the elephant I would work with for the day. Called "The Princess", she was one of the larger elephants and is a bit of a favorite with all of the staff at the conservatory. Her mahout showed me how to scramble onto her back, by grabbing the top of her ear with my right hand, a fold of skin on her leg with my left and commanding "song soong" so she would bend her knee for me to step on and then jump onto her back. Actually, you ride on the elephant's neck, just behind the ears and I was perched here while the mahout instructed Princess to walk, balancing on a single log (!!) and then pick up the mahout stick and hand it to me while she stood, sat, and layed on her belly. I dismounted and then watched Princess roll onto her side (she looked like a big dog with this trick) and once she was upright again, she bent her front knees down so I could take a running jump at her head and land, backwards, on her neck while she stood. This all sounds much more graceful than it actually was and the mahouts had a good time laughing at me as I jumped and clawed my way into proper position. There's no handles on these things!

We rode the elephants down to the watering hole and stayed on their backs while they submerged themselves. Initially we were just scooping water onto their backs and heads to scrub them down, but the session quickly turned into a water fight as my mahout instructed Princess to take a snootfull of water and blow it out at another elephant's tourist and then at a group of tourists who were taking pictures at the water's edge. Elephants: the original water gun. Needless to say, I was soaked but had never had so much fun!

Next, we watched the elephants perform for the tourists. With their mahouts, the elephants demonstrated their logging skills (carrying logs, creating piles of logs, rolling logs, etc) and other neat tricks (bowing, raising a flag, etc). A couple of the elephants, including Princess, painted pictures. It was fun to watch the elephants take the brushes in their hands and create lines on the canvas. The elephants also seemed to be having a good time; they were wagging their tails and flapping their ears, which generally indicates a happy elephant.

We were taken to visit baby elephants after the show. There were two, Areena who was super sweet and would let you hug her and play with her trunk and another elephant which liked to take out tourists with a swipe of her trunk. We fed Areena peanuts and rice cakes; when she saw someone with food, she'd walk over to demand it, prodding you with her trunk. We put the food directly in her mouth and tried to remove our hand before her squishy tongue started moving the food around.

During our visit to the elephant hospital we saw veterinarians checking out a recent arrival, and performing some procedure on an elephant that had unexpectedly lost a lot of weight. Elephants are brought here from all over Thailand, so in addition to us, there were vet students from Germany and the private owners of the elephants watching. Some elephants had been there for 13 years or more as it takes a very long time for elephants to heal, particularly if their legs or feet were affected. We saw a couple of elephants who had stepped on land mines and another that lost 2/3 of her trunk in a logging accident.

After lunch, we took an elephant "taxi" ride where instead of sitting on the elephant's neck, we rode two to a carriage on a tour of the grounds. Northern Thailand is incredibly beautiful; there's lush jungle and singing birds, and swarms of dragonflies, and rivers and hills and so on. When we first sat in the carriage, they fastened a seatbelt across our laps which I laughed at after riding solo all morning. It was soon evident why the extra precaution though as our carriage lurched up and down and at points we were at an 80 degree angle to the ground. It's amazing how sure footed these elephants are and that they can walk so gracefully across a single log or lurch up a steep hill with all of their weight and not slip, but I wasn't entirely sure of it all until the ride was over.

The next stop on the tour was the Elephant Dung Paper Factory where we got to make paper out of poo. It was cleaned and sanitized before we actually started, not that it would have mattered since my mahout suit was still wet from the morning dunking in elephant dung-infested waters.

We went back to the training grounds and worked with the elephants for another 40 minutes or so. At one point, the mahout on the ground offered me a bottle of water and when I said "yes please!" he handed it to Princess to hand it up to me on her back. She already had a trunkful of sugar cane though and you could tell she was trying to figure out what to do. She definitely wanted to eat the sugar cane and did not want to put it down, but now there was this bottle of water in her trunk which she did not want to eat. Hmm. After mulling it over for a few minutes - she swung her trunk up towards me, but then back down to her mouth, and then wagged it around as she chewed on the problem - she finally grabbed the sugar cane with her mouth but managed to miss the water bottle which she then handed to me.

We were getting on and off the elephants and my thigh muscles were beginning to give out, so I was glad when the session came to a close. I was standing on the ground in front of Princess drinking my water when she decided she was thirsty too and cupped her trunk towards me so I could pour water from my bottle into her trunk. My water bottle wasn't going to go very far for a thirsty elephant and so we walked over to the faucet the elephants drink out of and the mahouts started another water fight.

It was back on the elephants one more time and we rode them into another watering hole for a bath and then up through the jungle where they would be left to graze for the night. I really wish I was a better writer so I could describe how it felt to perch on an elephant and feel her ears wrap back against my legs, steadying me, as we went up hills. Or the sensation of hot elephant breath on my face as she wrapped her trunk up over her head towards me in hopes of getting food. Or the strangeness of being in water up to my neck while an entire elephant was submerged beneath me. I was sorry to say goodbye to Princess and trudge back to the office to head home - this was definitely one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had.

Another one of the tourists up for the day was a Swiss guy named Peter who had rented a tuk tuk to bring him to the camp from Chiang Mai. The tuk tuk driver stuck around for the day and followed Peter everywhere on foot, carrying his backpack, taking pictures with Peter's camera, and walking along into the jungle behind our elephants. He looked a bit like a porter and the best part was all day Peter called him "Tuk Tuk". "Come on Tuk Tuk, let's go to the shop." "Would you like water Tuk Tuk?" It was pretty funny, but they actually were good pals by the end of the day and were nice enough to let me ride back to Chiang Mai with them. I'm not going to recommend that anyone ride for 60 km in the back of a tuk tuk over hills, through the rain, or stuck in traffic, but it was quite an experience to see the countryside go by and have the wind whip in my face through the open sides of the tuk tuk.

I'm quite sore today - probably a combination of elephant and tuk tuk and am going to enjoy my last day Chiang Mai and see if I can muster the energy to climb Doi Suthep (300 steps) on my own steam.

I'm going to post some of my elephant pictures here once I get back to Bangkok, but in the meantime you can see some (including my not-so-graceful attempts to get onto the elephant) at www.changthai.com by clicking on "tourists in our activity."

The easy way up

View from the taxi

The nice one

My favorite trick

Snakehead fish in red curry

Thar be pirates, matey!

After a couple of days wandering around in Bangkok, there are two observations I must share. 1: Thai people are crazy about pastry, and 2: there is absolutely positively nothing sacred to the evil pirates of Thailand (and probably the rest of Asia too).

First, the pastry. So there are a number of pastry shops - chains really - scattered around the city which surprised me a little bit since pastries always seemed like more of a western thing, but globalization is here to stay and so are the pastry shops in Bangkok I suppose. Anyhow, the pastries all look so nice in the window and there are scads to choose from. They all have that flaky croissant-ish look to them and are in cute little shapes and filled with things like hot dog. You should really see these pastries for yourself - they look so delicious until you read the label: tuna pie, sausage with two meats, or my personal favorite, ham corn. One pastry in particular caught my eye because it was cut in such a way to display the not one but two hotdogs it contained along with a bunch of shredded pork. (I also have to note how much I love seeing English labels in general because of the 'call it like you see it' practicality of the names (see ham corn) as well as the creative spelling, e.g. "seafoof in curry".) I'll have to write more about the food that I'm actually eating in a future post, but rest assured TB that you could live here for a year and never see a chili or pepper near your food.

Really you're wasting a trip if you come to Thailand and don't plan to shop. I mean, there are beautiful wats and wonderful food and gorgeous scenery etc etc, but there are also $1 bootleg dvd's to be had and fake Hermes on every corner. I can't get sanctimonious about any of this as I plan to take full advantage of the copywrite violations going on over here and I understand that the Thai economy doesn't allow many people to afford the real deal and can appreciate the seller's ingenuity in replicating items and packaging so that the only difference between the real and the fake is the price tag. But do they have to fake everything? Big computer corporation software, check. DVD's of every movie and television show under the sun, check. Purses, check. Shirts and underwear, check. Livestrong bracelets, check. Wait a sec, Livestrong bracelets? What's even the point of faking those? I'm pretty sure the proceeds of the pirated bracelet do not go to Lance's cancer causes. And why buy a bracelet to show that you support cancer research if you're not actually supporting cancer research when you buy the bracelet? Very confusing.

I think Bangkok is best described as a clean version of NYC where everyone's psychotic. Which isn't to say that people who live in Bangkok have mental issues - on the contrary, they must be really sane to be able to live there. It's an interesting place to be and all, but it was definitely time to get out and so I took the night train to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand and arrived here this morning. The trip took place in the dark, but there were some serious lightening storms going on that illuminated the countryside and we passed through the Central Plains. It was very dramatic with lightning occurring at least once per second for five or six hours while I dozed and woke with the jostling train. I plan to do some shopping here and am looking forward to taking a cooking class tomorrow after which I should be able to tell you a little bit more about what I've been eating.

Buddha

The big guy in the back is a reclining Buddha. You'll have to take my word for it that the rest of his body's there as well. 

My first Wat! 

All Thai'd up

I arrived in Bangkok yesterday, tired and grubby from three flights and four airports and made my way towards my guesthouse and the shower. In a previous post I noted that my guesthouse was located "conveniently near Patpong" according to their website but I quickly learned that it was incorrect. The guesthouse isn't located conveniently near anything except the 7-11 which I've made much use of for water and cold coffee drinks and the like. While I was initially disappointed to learn that going anywhere would require a 10-minute walk, then a 20 minute ride on the "skytrain" and then a boat ride down the river, the upside is that the guesthouse is quiet and clean and in a safe neighborhood so it worked out okay.

Rather than dissolving into my bed as I was tempted to do, after dropping off my bags I ventured out to one of the more popular areas in Bangkok and wandered around. I have never in my life seen so much food sold out on the street or so many people enjoying it. You can't walk 5 paces anywhere in the city without a stand selling cut fruit in a bag or soup in a bag or soda in a bag or rice in a bag. The only things that do not come in bags come on sticks: fruit on a stick, sausage on a stick, meat on a stick, etc. It seems pretty efficient; people will walk around and grab a few bags and/or sticks of food and combine them in a bowl to eat at the fold-up chairs and tables that also crowd the sidewalks. According to all of my guidebooks, the food from the street stalls (with the possible exception of the fruit) is very safe to eat, but I haven't tried it yet because I'm not so sure about the utensils and dishes which all come from a grubby tub of water.

I found a spa that offered traditional Thai massage among other things and didn't look like the type of place that would cater to the Patpong crowd and indulged in a 2-hour massage. Thai massage isn't really anything like any massage I've had before. And I'd hesitate to call it a massage in the way that I would call an afternoon at Habitude a massage. I think a better word might be "tenderize". After changing into pajamas and being offered some fruity sort of iced tea, I laid down on a mat on the ground and my massage therapist (for lack of a better term) proceeded to apply her full body to mine in order to pummel, manipulate, crack and bend every muscle and joint in my body. I'm lying there in the cool room listening to nature-y music piped in and she's holding my foot straight out and kneading my thigh with her feet. And then cracking the joints in my toes one by one. And then balancing her knees on the backs of my legs while smooshing my back down towards the floor (at one point I thought my lungs had collapsed). And then in the coup de grace, pulling my entire body up to "rest" on her knees in a backwards bridge as I was suspended in the air.

I'm sure that traditional Thai massage has some wonderful health benefits, but I don't think that restoring tired muscles is one of them. I was actually quite relieved to pay my $12 and exit the spa.

Today I've been exploring the "old city" part of Bangkok - the Grand Palace, wats and the like - and getting acclimated. Whenever I go to different countries, it seems there are a few things I consistently look to see in order to get a feel for the place. For example, the types of animals that wander the streets, which Western chains are popular, what the bathrooms are like, and the flavors of potato chips they sell. Here I discovered that Lay's offers chips in salmon teriyaki or grilled lobster (with ridges).