www.davynextdoor.com

I’m going to work backwards a little because it’s way easier to do, so let me just say that I’m using the free internet access at my ridiculously sweet house-turned-into-hostel that I just arrived at. For 7 dollars a night this place is pretty ridiculous. It’s essentially a realllly clean house with really nice showers, beds, couches, TVs, this computer, vending machines, and really nice young Thai staff that have already been really helpful and hospitable. They organized some sort of “traditional” (I always take that word with a grain of salt when my money is involved) Thai dinner and dance tonight for people staying here that I’ll be going to. One of the guys that works here said he wants to go camping tomorrow so if 4 people want to go he’s going to make it happen.

I just had lunch with the 4 Thai people that work here. They invited me to eat with them and then refused my money when I offered to pay something for the food they made. The meal consisted of all of us sitting cross legged around 5 or 6 bowls of food on a wooden mat. You would ball up some sticky rice in your hand and then dip it into some of the food dishes, of which I have no clue what any of them were. It was quite spicy and also quite fantastic.

I had dinner last night with an American who has been living in Bangladesh for the last 8 months. He was starting an 800 kilometer bike ride to Chiang Mai this morning, probably about when I arrived here. At the restaurant I ordered “Fried rice with Pineapple” for 2.50 and was pleasantly surprised when they brought out my meal served in a hollowed out pineapple shell. Danggg it was gooood!

My train ride was fantastic. It was dark and I slept for most of it but it was nice seeing countryside for the last few hours. Trains are exciting and the fact that the 14 hour air conditioned ride with a nice bed that carried me halfway across Thailand cost about 20 dollars makes me very happy.

The British guy (Alan) I stayed with in the hostel in Bangkok was really nice and we talked for a while, him telling me about his 3 months traveling in India, and me telling him about Tokyo. He’s headed up towards Chiang Mai up the West coast of Thailand and we both mentioned how we’d like to rent some sort of vehicle for maybe a week and travel around the less traveled sections of the mountains here. I’m going to talk to some people and see how cheap/viable it is and we both said we’d e-mail each other when we know more information.

I’ve almost been too overwhelmed by Thailand to take that many pictures. The same thing happened when I got to Tokyo for the first few days, it was so different and strange I didn’t really know what to do.

I wasn’t so fond of Bangkok, especially coming from the super clean and orderly Tokyo, but it was a lot of fun riding on the back of Motorcycles for around 70 cents to get wherever you need in the city or for a similar price riding a tuk-tuk. My last tuk-tuk ride to the train station the guy didn’t speak much english at all, except to say that since I was from America “big money.” At a stop light the driver was yelling to his friend in Thai on the sidewalk and eventually started screaming hysterically, looking back and forth from me to the guy while making gestures like “OH HE’S GOING TO KILL ME!” The friend eventually ran out into the crowded street and just as the light turned green he threw some stuff at us as the Tuk Tuk driver pulled into an intersection. He narrowly avoided hitting a car, swerving sharp to the right and I screamed like a girl as I flew across the back of the Tuk-Tuk. The driver was laughing the whole time and gave me a thumbs up as we straightened out and accelerated down the street. “Big fun” I said and he laughed even harder.

Not related to Thailand, a quick note on how ridiculous Japan can be: I was told it would be ok for me to carry my tripod onto the airplane but when I went through the security checkpoint the guy measured it and it came up 61 centimeters. 60 centimeters is the limit. Oops. He laughed a bit but seemed serious about not letting me through so he called over his supervisor to have a look. Eventually there was a crowd of around 6 employees looking at it trying to figure out ways to dismantle it to cut that last centimeter off so I could get through. After about 5 minutes we triumphed and I was let through.

I’m not on the internet much but when it’s right in my face for free and I want to keep a journal of the things I see and do anyways it’s easy to post here. Once I get to the more remote regions of Thailand I imagine it will become harder.

I’m feeling great, doing well, and things just keep getting better. I’ve got 2 nights in this hostel but I’m probably going to extend it. Definitely about time for my first shower now…