In celebration of my new apartment (and internet access)...

...I'm hereby starting to blog about my little-discussed two days in Bangkok.

September 16th.

I don't wanna go to dinky little Chiang Mai. I'm told it's beautiful beyond compare, but I'm so enraptured with Bangkok that I could happily sequester myself here for months. The central core of Bangkok is a vast honeycomb of superhighways and skytrains, food courts and streetside markets and immense malls. The hum of commerce is the background noise of the city, imbuing Bangkok with an astonishing vitality that I don't think I've seen anywhere else. Food vendors plying noodle soup and stewed chicken feet and everything in between line every street and alley. Taxi and tuk-tuk drivers shriek "Where you go?" at me at every irritating opportunity. Shopping malls plusher (and pricier) than anything I've seen in Canada stretch straight into the cloud, and the vast electronics plazas like the legendary Panthip beckon to me. And at every step the core is thick with crowds - Thais, Chinese, and more Westerners than I had ever anticipated, an ample chunk of the capital's ten million residents. I can see why many visitors, Thai and Farang (westerners) alike, quickly exile themselves from the metropolitan hubbub, but to me it's damn near paradise. Huge, energetic cities fascinate me, and there's a stunning kinetic quality to Bangkok that could keep my interest for a very long time.

Fanning out from the central core, a twisting latticework of alleyways and two-lane roads oxygenates the sprawling middle reaches of Bangkok and the suburbs beyond. My modest and rather pleasant guesthouse is tucked away on one of these innumerable side streets. After I sweated my way through customs yesterday morning and completed an unwelcome few hours of paperwork for CUSO, my friendly but slightly unsettling contact at the Bangkok office dropped me off at the hotel. More than slightly exhausted by the journey and put off by the last gasp of the rainy season, I retreated into my room for the night.

Fortunately, this left me well rested and up early for today's explorations. I picked my way along the wire-thin sidewalks that trace midtown Bangkok's central streets. An unnerving blur fills these roads, composed of taxis, the motorized tuk-tuk rickshaws, a surprising plethora of luxury sedans, and the countless, careening motorbikes and mopeds that symbolize Thailand as sincerely as the flag. Trusting somewhat nervously in the crude map drawn by the guesthouse, I found my way to the nearest main boulevard, gingerly sprinting across street corners. I picked a direction (left, if anyone cares) and walked past modest casinos and shuttered restaurants and shops just opening for the day (it was about 8AM, I think). Hunger eventually overcame my cultural reticence, and through gesturing and muttering I bought a huge steamed cob of corn, dipped in vinegar and green onion, from a tired-looking woman with a roadside food cart. Climbing an overpass, I found a small street boy begging change from passersby... I gave him ten baht because I liked the wai he offered me.

At street level I found an elegant entrance into one of Bangko's two subway lines, and pleasantly found it clean and sophisticated - far more so, I confess, than Vancouver's Skytrain, as evidenced by the LCD displays blaring advertisements and train schedules.

I'm not sure what I expected of Thailand's immense capital, but I've been taken aback by its startling, eager modernity. Though there's poverty aplenty here, this town is surprisingly reminiscent - economically speaking - of Hong Kong or even Tokyo. Unlike many of my fellow shoestring travelers, I have a great fondness for the trappings of modernity: supermarkets, refrigeration, mobile phones and, of course, tachyon-fast internet access. Discovering that such amenities are always within arm's reach here has been one of the pleasures of my trip so far.


P.S. (September 26th)

Sadly, further details will have to wait until tomorrow - that's all I've edited into coherence thus far, and I have homework due tomorrow. Smack me with HTML if I start slacking off - I really want to make a proper habit of updating this blog.