What's that hose for?

Well I made it and it only took me 31 straight hours of travel to get here. My flight left Dallas at 10AM and chased the sun west for the next 13 hours. After landing in Tokyo, I had enough sun light during the layover to put me at just over 24hours of broad daylight which was pretty awesome. It was 4am in Austin but bright and sunny outside where I was. The next flight was 7 hours to Bangkok which I slept for most of but woke up just in time for the moist towel, whose purpose I still don't understand. Anyways, I eventually got dropped off around 2am in the backpacker's ghetto known has Khoa San Road. I didn't have any places lined up to stay so I just started walking around looking for a guesthouse with a room available. This proved more difficult than I thought it would be and navigating the throngs of drunken foreigners only made it worse. After walking down numerous alleys and side streets, I found a room with a bed and a bathroom and took the best cold shower I've ever had.

I woke up painfully early the next day because of the jet lag (something I'm still doing 3 days later) and decided to go exploring. I just walked aimlessly in any direction that looked interesting. It was surprisingly easy to escape the lunacy of KSR and happen upon Thais going about their daily business. I've spent most of the last few days walking around different areas of town such as Chinatown, Siam Square (which has the biggest mall I've ever seen... 6 stories, 300 yards x 100 yards) and the KSR area. I've taken a few pictures which I uploaded to Flickr with descriptions so I'll spare you the full narrative.

Now onto something completely different...
The "amenities" here are pretty basic. I've been staying in rooms without windows, AC or a bathroom because well they are about $6. I really just need a place to crash for the night and drop my stuff so I'm not really looking for much. Each stall in the shared bathrooms has a shower head and a toilet with a hose next to it. There's no toilet paper because they dont use that here but fortunately I brought some to hold me over until I bit the bullet. That happened pretty quickly... I went to the bathroom early in the morning on my second day and did business. I tragically realized I left my TP in my room and then thought "well this was inevitable I guess," looked at my left hand and said "it's just you and me old friend," grabbed the hose and went to town.



It really was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be! Everything ended up spick and span and I was on my way.

Anyways, I've walked my feet raw in the last couple days and I don't have much energy left to write more so that will be it for now. Be sure to check out my Flickr page for some real pictures (the link is over there on the right) and leave a comment if you feel like it.

Oh and almost forgot... It's loud, dirty, smelly, hot and humid here but the food is good and I'm having a blast. Cant wait for more.