Good Morning Thailand!

July 3rd, 9:45pm - Khao San Road Chabad, Bangkok

Dear readers, this has been an unbelievable day... for those of you who won't want to read the long post that is about to follow, here are the highlights...

1) I got a 2 hour thai massage for $8
2) I met up with my friend Snow, who is Thai, and then her two friends - all amazing, fun people
3) I was in a gigantic upscale super mall when all of the power went out and nobody stopped buying/selling
4) I saw 'Hancock' the movie in a Thai movie theater
5) I ate pig intestines, lungs, heart and stomach in a soup in the Chinatown of Bangkok for $1
6) I got a hotel right across from what is probably the only Jewish Chabad in Bangkok, got in with my American passport and am now doing all of my internet surfing in a free air-conditioned building
7) After this posting I am going to hit up Khao San road, which is basically a crazy multi-national Spring Break spot with incredibly cheap beer and openly advertised prostitutes

*Wipes Brow*

Now for the two of you still reading (thanks mom and dad), here are some more details to fill in.

So today started with me moving on out of my nice air-conditioned upscale hotel and descending on Bangkok with my 500 LB backpack. My god, that thing is a mother******. It is heavy, unwieldy, and makes me hot as hell. Walking around with that thing gives me a new respect for anyone who has ever done any kind of long term hiking EVER.

I spent my first hour or two walking around the Bangkok streets just trying to get a feel for the place. It wasn't too hot, and there were lots of vendors selling food. I bought some Pad Thai for some ridiculously low price (a theme here) and threw off the pack. This was the first time I realized it would have made a lot of sense to invest in some language classes. I ended up sitting next to a very nice, pleasant women who smiled, pointed at my food and smiled some more. Then she said some things. I wasn't sure if it was 'Hi, how are you? My name is...' or 'Get away from me you filthy foreigner'. The point is that I wasn't able to communicate with her, and life would be so much better if I could talk with the locals. Ah well, not the end of the world.

After lunch I started to get pretty sweaty while walking around, as well as dehydrated and sore. Backpack 1, Zach 0. I got suckered into a massage parlor for a "Thai Massage" by 3 older looking women with grins so wide I was a bit off put. It turned out to be an absolutely wonderful experience. From now on I'm requiring any woman I date to be well schooled in Thai Massage. The pampering was just what I needed, and for about 90 minutes I was kneaded, twisted, pulled and pushed until I felt like a new man. The women giggled and laughed a lot while talking to each other, but I think it was all good-natured. The bill was about 300 Baht including a tip ($9).
I sallied forth from there by taking a taxi to Khao San road, which is the backpacker hub of Bangkok and also the reason I may end up in jail with a drunk and disorderly charge from the Thai police. Even in the daytime the street is full of aspiring (and successfuly) drunk young Americans, Europeans, Asians, and who knows what else. Taxis aren't allowed to actually come into Khao San, and police line the ends of the street on both sides. Add in the Tuk-Tuk drivers that badger you to NO END every 3 feet (A tuk-tuk is an open air death mobile with 3 wheels and the guts to weave between 2 cars on the highway) and the touristy jewelry stores and you realize the Thai attitude towards Khao San and its denizens: Lets just barricade these people into one street, hope they don't do to much damage to themselves or each other, build some ripoff food and souvenir stores and then throw in a lot of cheap alcohol and openly advertised prostitutes. This is basically the spring break I never imagined God would see fit to grant me. I must have been a lot more holy in a past life than I have previously assumed.

Once in Khao San, I found a hotel room at a placed called the Orchid hotel that is actually a street or two away. For 900 Baht ($27) I got two nights of a room with a bed, two towels, and a decent AC. When I walked out of the hotel I realized I had parked myself across the street from a Chabad, the "Chabad of Thailand and Laos" (www.chabadthailand.com). Completely full of israelis and AC and free internet. They have Windows Vista even. My American passport got me in and so this is where I'll be doing most of my posting for the next day or two.

After moving on from Khao San I met my friend Snow (from Northwestern) at a gigantic super mall built a couple of years ago. It has Dolce and Gabanna, LaCoste, Hermes, the whole nine yards. Snow is awesome, and took me around the super mall suggesting things to try and eat, buying me a sim card for a phone she lent me, and taking me to check out a movie in the AC. Besides the 40 previews, everyone stands right before the movie for a tribute to the king, and not standing is extremely impolite. Doing something like urinating on an image of the king carries a jail sentence and/or the death penalty. As we were walking around the mall the entire place, all 6 or 7 floors and 4 buildings, lost power. But did that stop anyone? Of course not, Snow took the opportunity to find a relatively quiet store and bought me my sim card. For anyone interested, my Thai phone number is 080-226-0885.

Snow and I met up with Not and Yann, two of her friends and we all journeyed off to get some food. After some repeated quieries as to my food allergies and Snow asking me what exactly I was willing to eat, I convinced them that I would eat anything they put in front of me. They responded by taking me on a Tuk-Tuk into deepest Chinatown, a place of enough authenticity for the locals that I would definitely never have made it on my own. The first thing we all ate was a broth with twisted noodles and various parts of a pig. I asked them not to tell me what I was eating until after I ate it (my dad would probably call me either 'a baby' or 'a fool' at this piont). I ended up munching on Pig heart, intenstine, stomach and lung. It was all a bit hard to distinguish but basically was a meaty, chewy kind of fiberous solid. I know they say that when you eat the heart of your enemy you take his strength, which might explain how I'm able to pound out this incredibly long post :).

After some more food adventures with Not and Yann they took me to a dessert place in Chinatown, which served me up a whole bunch of interesting ingredients in some kind of sugary syrup. I ate water chestnuts, beans, mangoes and other random things all in a bowl with ice and sweet stuff.

A final digression before I head off to drink with the Khao San crowd... It was as I was eating my ice filled dessert that I realized I had also been drinking lots of glasses of water with my dinner, each one filled with ice. The ice is tap water, even if the water is bottled. So I've basically been drinking a lot of tap water tonight, with my pig intestines, fried eggs and sugary mangoes. Many people have told me not to drink the tap water, because my stomach can't handle some of its more exotic elements. Fortunately I've heard that alcohol is a good disinfectant/bacteria killer, and so I'm off to perform some emergency self-medication (Stan, I'm sure you're proud! I didn't need medical school or anything.)

In any case, thank you so much to anyone whose read the bulk of this, I hope its been as fun for you to read as it has been for me to experience and write about. I'll be back with more in the Thailand A.M!