"Bangkok"

Crossing the border to Thailand turned out to be really easy. After almost fighting with the woman giving out the entry cards, we got inside, and waited the 45 minutes of tourists going through the only two counters open to foreign passport holders. At the many open for Thai people, there was no line. Paul and I started talking to a girl from our bus, and it turned out she was from Ukraine. She had been to Bangkok already, and knew a cheap place to stay. We went with her to the "New Mary V Guesthouse", we booked a twin room, and shared it. This way we paid only 85 Bath each, that is about 2.5 USD, and is by far the cheapest you can get in Bangkok. The guest house was close to Koshan Road, the main tourist strip in the Thai capital. The city was the most westernized I had seen since Shanghai, and although offering some good food and a decent China town, there is really not much to say about Bangkok. I spent one night there, and during my one and a half day I visited various temples, including the famous AAAA and the gigantic Standing Buddha. The city was expensive, and the only way to get around without paying a lot was to let the TukTuk take you to a tailor. If you did talk to the tailor for 10 minutes the driver got free petrol, and you don't have to buy anything. That way I could get around for cheap. The other cheap transport was the local river boats. They were only 13 Bath for a ticket, no matter which dock you jumped off at. The first day we met an Australian girl at dinner, she was eating alone, so we asked her to join us. This was an expensive restaurant for my standards, and when asking for the bill, they gave it orally. Luckily I remembered the price of my dish. It was a green curry with chicken. It did not say anything about rice in the menu, not even at the side courses section. The waiter had brought me rice with my meal, without me ordering it. I had of course expected it to be included in the meal, so I ate it. He now wanted me to pay for the rice, and when I told them I never was going to do that since I never ordered rice, they never asked if I wanted any and never told me I had to pay for it, they started making a big deal about it. I guess most people just pay it and go, it is not like some rice is expensive, but it is a matter of the principle. I told them what I though about their service and left him the money my dish had costed. Those small things like that irritates me a lot. Not at all when it is locals, trying to make a little extra in their portable street restaurant, but when a large westernized restaurant on the main tourist strip tries to pull stuff like that, I feel disgusted.

After dinner we went and has a Thai massage. It was about 5 or 6 USD, and quite different than the massage I had in Hanoi. Now they put all four of us, the Ukrainian girl and Australian girls, Paul and me in one room. We were laying on mattresses as the Thais were massaging. As we entered the room, we could see that one of the masseuses was a LadyBoy. That did freak us out a bit, but I got an old fat woman to massage me, and that was better. Thai massage is really deep, and not at all relaxing. It was at times so painful that I almost had to scream. In addition to pinching my muscles with her hands, she also used her elbow, her knee and her feet to really inflict some pain to my body. At times she was walking around on my back, arms and legs. In the end she cracked my back and stretched my legs a bit, and I felt like I jut had played a long and extremely hard football game.

We found a club where there were almost only locals, and live bands playing Thai Rock. It was pretty cool, and the saxophone was so fast that the dancing was really tiring. It was a lot of fun though, and we dances for a couple hours among the shorter Thais, all with long hair and black and white clothes, most of them striped.

In the evening of my second day I got on the bus to Champorn. I met some Norwegian girls traveling for three months. They reminded me to apply for school. I had completely forgotten. If I had not gotten the reminder I guess that would not have been too bad either. I would have to travel for another year. No matter how nice traveling more would be though, I think I better get back home to study. And as I got on the boat to the island of Koh Tao, I knew a new study was just about to begin.