Sawat Dii Means Hello (Bangkok, TH)

Attention deficit Dara and her sensory overload issues have arrived in Bangkok. Actually they arrived on Thursday in the middle of the night, checked into a real hotel, and swam in a beautiful empty pool. Now it's Sunday and me and my total inability to absorb all the madness at once are remarkably still alive. I've moved and am now staying in guest house on Khao San Road trying not to think about the beginning of "The Beach" where the guy next door to Leonardo DiCaprio kills himself in a guest house on Khao San Road. It is Africa hot here, or Asia hot more accurately I suppose, and it's entirely overwhelming and chaotic and huge and crowded and loud as hell, but it's facsinating and amazing and delicious and quite affordable. I can say "hello" and "thank you", I can eat papayas and mangos and pineapples and coconut ice cream, I can bargain the cost of a tank top down from $4 to $3, I can talk to monks - it's incredible.

Yesterday, my friend Nicky's amazingly nice Thai art professor friend Krisaya and her boyfriend hung out with me all afternoon and took me to a great Thai culture and creative design exhibit I never would have found on my own. Today I spent 5 hours at the biggest market I've ever seen. Ever. They had everything. I dare you to name something you couldn't have bought at this market. Live animals, tupperware, silks, lights, furniture, paper, clothes, dead animals, toys, edible animals, watches... I mean, maybe not cars or people, but everthing else was for sale. It was insane. I bought clothes and various tasty juices in plastic bags and left when physical collapse was imminent. I have all week to wait for Laotian and Indian visas (poor planning on my part) so I will continue to explore this massive city and the various temples of which Bangkok, according to my own precise estimates, has about 872.