Ahhh... Bangkok?

Today has been a strange day for me. I went out drinking with a bunch of people from the hostel last night. It ended up that there were 3 other Canadians in the hostel (they didn't come out though) and everyone else seemed to be from England! It was pretty crazy that they all seemed to be from the same place.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun and came back home feeling a little queezy. I didn't feel much better when I woke up this morning either... I had to get up though. So I forced myself out of bed and went for a 3 hour long walk to a park I'd heard was supposed to be nice... and then to Patpong which I expected to be much worse but I suppose they try to make it look ok in the daytime? I don't know... I'll have to go back tomorrow night and see what it's all about at night time.

I ate and then realized just how tired I was (I think I managed to get 5 hours sleep) so I came back to the hostel and fell asleep for a couple of hours. I woke up feeling much better and decided to go explore the neighbourhood some more. I found this crazy little market area which was pretty intense and took a few pictures and then headed back to the hostel. Then I remembered that I hadn't been to the lingam shrine yet... which happened to be just a few blocks away so I went there... but when I got near the area the directions I had sounded pretty sketchy... and the area wasn't any better - it was pretty quiet... no one was really around and there was homeless man near the canal sniffing glue. an alarm started going off in my head so I turned around and decided to head back to the hostel.

I spent the evening with two of the Canadians going out to MBK for some shopping (I've been good and have stopped buying things... mainly because I have no space left in my bag... I need to ship some stuff home!) and then went to a night market for dinner and then some more shopping.

I took the sky train a couple of times today. It really seems like it has potential to be a good transportation system but the trains seem really small and it's kind of expensive... it doesn't really make much sense for locals to be taking the sky train if they are with more than one person - taxis are cheaper! It was pretty cool to see the city from up above though. I may take the sky train again tomorrow to go back to the hotel Ryan and I are staying at.

Today's Bangkok experience was much better. I feel like I got a better idea of what this city is all about... it makes more sense to me now and I don't dislike it as much as I did initially.