It was a super quick visit to the travel hub of south east Asia, but one I'm not soon to forget.

I got in to BKK yesterday morning around 11:30, sent a few emails, and officially signed out of real life for a while. After the struggle of finding the luggage storage counter (it's on the main floor tucked behind a railing near gate 4 - if you ever need to know) I hopped on the sky train to Playa Thai and then caught a cab to the hostel near Khoa San road (I stayed at Born Free Hostel and had an awesome time there - would totally recommend it).

After checking in and chilling out for a little while to try and recover from the 22 hour commute, I hit the strip to grab my first Thai beers and some food (Pad Thai of course). I wandered up and down Khoa San Road and had a couple large beers before grabbing noodles from a cart vendor.

Khoa San Road is the party/tourist hub of the city. It's rammed full of bars, food, and accommodation joints. It reminded me a lot of Burbon St in Mew Orleans in and "anything and everything goes" kind of way.

After heading back to the hostel I made friends with a couple of lovely people. One of my roommates was an enthusiastic Brittish chap from New Castle and another was a girl from Regina. There was also a guy from Oakville in the room so we joked that the Canadians were taking over - likely by poisoning everyone with politeness.

One thing led to another and next thing we were put for more beers and food. We came back to the hostel to hook up with another group but they changed their plans and we ended up following a group from the floor above out to the strip again. After many Changs (local beer that's not really regulated so anywhere from 4-14%) with our new crew, we bar hopped until we ran out of night. It was hot all night so we sweated it out with the other 10000 tourists dancing in the streets.

Today was a slow morning, didn't really move until noon. After breakfast with my new friends we headed out to the city centre. One girl was meeting a tour group so we took a tuk tuk (local taxi/bike/rickshaw) to her new hotel and then walked down to the Siam Paragon and BMK shopping area. In true free spirit fashion, on the way we got ice cream and played in a sprinkler.

Siam Paragon is an extravagantly high end shopping centre. We just went on to check out the air conditioning. BMK was more our style. It was a fun mix of western shopping mall meets street market vendors. The only problem was navigating whether it was appropriate to haggle like the streets or s*** up and pay like a mall.

After exploring we hired another tuk tuk to get back to the hostel. I grabbed food and said good bye to my new friends. Over stir fry and Coke Zero (still couldn't stomach another Chang) we all agreed that it felt like we we spent much more than 24 hours together. So while I didn't go near a ping pong show or indulge in the lady boy scene, I think these 24 hours were much more memorable in a better way.

Next off to the island for some scuba diving!!! Keep it weird!