One Night in Bangkok

(I mean, I had to use that title, right?)

48 Hours in the East Bay

Following a three stopover flight from BA to SFO and 24 hours of travel, we stumbled into Neil and Rachel's apartment exhausted, but happy to be home. After three months of traveling, I was struck by the easy access to an enormous fridge, cold potable water from the tap, a big fluffy comforter, and the plush toilet paper. (I swear it's at least 250 thread count. Stop over sometime.)

We spent the two days madly doing errands, eating a lot of Mexican food (I had it three times), filing our tax extension, and trading out some stuff from our house, which seems in good shape (knock on wood).

Jen has also realized the job market is bleak. That, combined with a few other factors, has made us toy with the idea of an extra two months in Asia (we had planned on three). It's embarassingly indulgent, I know, but all signs point to yes. That would give us enough time to take a crash course in Mandarin and really trek the Himalayas to our heart's content. We'll see...

Food Porn En Route to Laos

We're now spending the night in Bangkok, basically eating as much street food as possible and getting Thai massages (insert happy ending joke here).

While home, my boss at BAE asked me why we dedicate so much blog space to food. It's true. We love it. While traveling, I spend the day wondering what to have for dinner, or, in the case of Argentina, planning my ice cream combo for the evening. We have long discussions on Top 5 Meals of the trip, regularly updating the list as new entries appear. (For the record, most of them were in Brazil, with the boar as a strong Argentina entry.) The Bottom 5 are equally debated. (Peru, sadly, is well represented, though, to be fair, one of those meals was on a bus)

Given this food obsession, Thailand is AWESOME. While the commercialism and rampant backpacker scene turns me off, I could spend two days just wandering from street vendor to street vendor. In fact, that's what I'm doing now.

In the last seven hours, I've had a spicy green curry with rice, a banana crepe with condensed milk, barbecue chicken on a stick, these crunchy savory/sweet taco-like things (my favorite so far), fresh cucumbers and deep fried fish fritters in a spicy sweet sauce, pineapple wedges on a stick, and a rambutan fruit shake (a bold, possibly unwise move since it was made with unidentified water and ice). And nothing was more than $1.

Tomorrow we leave at 1:30pm for Laos, so I have the morning to keep going. On my hit list: mango sticky rice, green papaya salad, assorted meats on a stick, and whatever else I can find. I cannot, however, bring myself to have the grasshoppers or grubs, which they sell on a stick or in a bag like popcorn. I'm a big baby, I know. If it were Fear Factor, I'd be walking off in slow motion, with a voiceover saying how proud I was to make it that far. But, hell, you can see the wings and eyes and antennae and everything! (See photo. I think this guy should rethink his business plan and charge people just to take the photo, because I suspect he has more photographers than bug buyers.)

Quick Thoughts on Bangkok

At a glance, it looks a lot like Manila. But the traces of Buddhism (wats all over), the unparalleled street life, and the tourists everywhere really stand out as different.

No place we saw in Peru, Brazil, or Argentina had quite the concentration of foreign tourists as our little backpacker ghetto in Bangkok. In this neighborhood, we outnumber the locals by far. Also, I'm a little disturbed by how well they cater to us. They really have us pegged. Right now, for example, they're showing Napoleon Dynamite in the bar behind me. The t-shirts, Lonely Planet books, backpacks, and other crap for sale are EXACTLY the sort of things we need and want. Frankly, it just seems too contrived. Dorky white guys with tiny Thai women on their arms are everywhere. Like Leonardo di Caprio in The Beach, I, too, long for an "authentic" experience, not just one made for foreign consumption. (Just one of many ways Leo and I are alike. It's eerie, really.) I know this is problematic, but there it is.

That being said, I dig the energy and vibe of Bangkok on a Saturday night. It's really really fun. I could sit and drink cold beers on the street, watching the people go by all night, occasionally wandering over to the nearest vendor to get more meat on a stick.