In Bangkok

Landed safely in Bangkok and I am highly impressed with the infrastructure here. The roads are perfect everywhere, the airport's brand new, the busses were obtained recently, the trains are all rather new, and the tuk tuk (pronounced took took) are in repair, clean and colorful. I expected more chaos, but it's a major metropolitan city. Everyone obeys the traffic lights (which are all in working condition) and everyone crosses at crosswalks. I guess I expected it to be a little more like Africa... Sure there are unlicensed businesses everywhere (which happen to be the best places to eat) but everything is pretty orderly.

The plan is to bike through Cambodia to Ho Chi Min city and fly back to Bangkok and then home. Andrew, my friend from way back is going with me. He has another couple of weeks after I leave to decide what he wants to do. Rock climbing in the south of Thailand, yoga in India, trek to Nepal, who knows.... But I'm excited for him!

Went down to Khao San Road and got ourselves a tailor that Andrew's been to many times over the years. Got myself some suits, shirts, pants, a blazer, and a winter coat. Got Perin some skirts, some blouses, a top, a winter coat too based on her measurements I had with me. Learned a lot about different silk products and am impressed by his past work - all quality materials and extra stitching everywhere.

Had a couple beers with lunch and started wheeling and dealing on purchasing stuff. Got some sunglasses and some fire-breathing monkys with flashing red eyes lighters. Had to work hard to get the price down to what we were looking for: $1 each. Tried doing some tshirt deals, but the vendors that have my favorite shirts only have large shirts. (XL is best for me). And I suppose I could buy promising to work out for hours every day and then they'd only be really tight on me, but that's not the requirements you want to make of yourself to buy a tshirt with some clever or ironic print on the front of it.

We did get some flattened squid fresh off the grill which we saw a lot of people eating. Not quite a squid jerky but close. Thoroughly unpleasant in the tastebud region of the tongue. We spit those out after a couple of chews and then got more beers to wash the taste out of our mouths. We ate some other mini octopi off a stick that were grilled and then dunked into asian hot sauce for us and those were declicious! It's nice being able to get two full serving of pad thai and two beers for a 2 dollars.

We set up our bikes and they should be good to go. We used compresses CO2 gas to pump the tires and that the way to go! We should have brought more for insurance. We did spend some time trying to find a place to buy more. No luck.

We have to go pick up our visas today, then arrange take the train closer to the Cambodian border tomorrow morning. I have a third and four fittings for my suits today and then a final fitting when we fly back here from Saigon on Sunday.

A friend of Perin and myself named Harley will be in Bangkok today so maybe we'll run into him. That would be pretty cool.

Off to a busy day!