Thailand aka Sweatland

Welcome to Thailand!! Ahh I can't believe I'm here! The 24+ hr trip was so long! I knew that once I got on the plane I would NOT be meeting my future husband, and that I'd get stuck next to someone too big for the seat or something like that. I was right. I got an old Japanese man with horrendous breath! Really, just so bad. It was a long 14 hrs of breathing..haha. Watching way too many movies and tried to sleep, but having two screaming children nearby didn't help.  Arrived to Tokyo and thought I would be walking into the coolest, most hi-tech airport EVER...it wasn't. The Thailand airport was way cooler, as I had plenty of time to look at it since the "safe and save" airport express shuttle I paid to take was going to be another 30 min.  It finally came and we were all seated on the bus, but the ticket lady and the driver spent the next 25 min flirting...so we didn't leave until 11pm. Definitely didn't sit well with me since I was going to have to find my hostel in the dark.  Got off the bus and had NO CLUE where I was supposed to go! It could have been a disaster except the Thai people are so nice! I had 4 different people help me out and I eventually got to my super clean and wonderfully ACed hostel. There was so much AC that I was actually cold most of the night.

I slept for about 5 hours before I got up to start my day.  Intended on going to the US Embassy bc my passport is out of pages, and I actually ended up meeting a guy who is in the bunk next to mine who also needed to go to the UK Embassy, which was conveniently down the street from ours. Sweet! I have a friend! We tried to walk to a water boat to beat the traffic and ended up meeting this really nice guy who was a school teacher who set us up into a tuk-tuk to go there. The first tuk-tuk didn't work out after a while, but we met another teacher on the street who got us another tuk-tuk and told us it was a Buddhist holiday so neither of our embassies were even open. Good to know.  We spent the rest of our day getting driven around to a bunch of places by our really nice driver for only $10 baht! $1 dollar is about 28B, so obviously that was an awesome bargain.  Love Buddha for giving us these holidays where drivers don't charge anything. 

First thai food experience: HORRIBLE!! After our first temple, my new friend Pete and I decided to eat at a nearby outside food place. Sounds fine right? I decide on a picture that has noodles and broth..figured it was safe.  As I'm attempting to eat with both of my hands because I need my right hand for the chopsticks and the left for the spoon thing, I notice this round meat thing and was like, "Pete, what do you think this is?"  He's all like I don't know mate, and I'm like oh well it tastes weird but whatever. I continue to eat my food until I offer Pete some to try and he's like, "you're eating pig balls." OMGGGGGGGGGGG. I wanted to die!! He knew the whole time and thought it was so funny not to tell me. EWWWW!! I told him no one would ever let me live this down. He was like, how could you NOT tell? How am I supposed to know what pig testicles look like?? UGHHH. I still can't get over it. I ate 2...my grandmother would be so horrified. I am not even a fan of pork..how did I end up eating the worst part?? ahh. so gross.

So the rest of the day consisted of jokes about my food taste while we walked all around the city seeing the rest of the sites. We hit up the Chinatown here in Bangkok.  INSANE! NYC has nothing on this place.  There were stalls selling guns and knives, toys, steering wheels, cell phone covers, you name it! Every other stall was dirty magazines or movies. We got lost for a couple hours there just meandering through and finally made our way towards the Grand Palace. Not sure I saw the Palace..just ended up in the temple next to it.

My feet kill. Have not walked around this much in ages, and obviously I don't run anymore. The heat and humidity here are absolutely unbearable!! I'm sweating myself away again like I did in Brazil. It's gross. And of course, I've already gotten plenty of mosquito bites. I'm not sure how they found my legs in the middle of day during peak sun time--shouldn't they be sleeping or something?!

Anyways, everyone can stop worrying! It's not so crazy here. It's like India, but better. The people are the same amount of nice and friendly and full of smiles for foreigners, but it is cleaner here, with less homeless people that I've seen and a lot less begging.  Now, if the Thai people could get over their obsession with pork, things would be fantastic.

Will probably go out tonight with a bunch of ppl from the hostel, so I'm on my way to making lots of friends for a day! Moving north in couple of days...will keep you posted! Not sure what I'll be doing tomorrow since I saw all the sites in one day. Oops. Oh well!

Hope you're all doing well!!


p.s. will put up pictures later today or tomorrow!