One Night in Bangkok.

An interesting one to be sure ! After waiting for my friend that lives here for over an hour, I have up and decided to head out on my own. I took a Tuk Tuk ride (you haven't lived until you have rode in one of these death traps...) to Khao San Road, long known as a "back packers hang out ". It was impressive, it is a walking street about 2 km long and filled with tourist from all over the world. From street vendors selling various items from t shirts to jewellery and foot massages every 10 feet, not to mention a few places where they sell "fish massage" where you put your feet in a tank full of some kind of sucking fish that attack your feet and chew away at the hard skin you have built up - not kidding, very strange !

After taking a walk up and down the road I settled into a nice little patio to have a cool drink and people watch for a while. I discovered the joy of having Thailands LEO beer poured in a glass full of ice - very nice ! Since it is still over 35 degrees at 11pm it was refreshing :) After watching for a while a guy approached me and asked if I was sitting alone, turns out he just got to Bangkok as well. His name was Francois and he was from Paris, very nice guy an his English was very good - except he often forgot who he was talking to and started to talk French to me - which really gave my grade school knowledge of French quite the work out ! I had to keep reminding him - "Francois ! English please !" And he would laugh and revert back to English for me and apologize.

Over the course of three days I have had conversations in English, French (basic...), German ( I have to admit my German is pretty good and I can almost hold a whole conversation without stopping the other person and asking them to slow down or explain to me what a certain word means ) as well as Chinese ( not me, the other guy lol. Thankfully his English was pretty good) as well as picking up a few phrases in Thai, it is a very difficult language, I will be lucky to remember a handful of sayings when I return.

Bangkok has been wonderful, but time to leave and continue the tour ! I am taking the over night train to Chiang Mai, should be interesting ! I have a second class sleeper booked, 15 hour trip that should get in at 9:30am but from what I gather the trains are often late here so I hope I make it in before noon !