And moving on from Bangkok

Bangkok is truly a city unlike any other. At least not any other that I've been too. And i guess i haven't been to that many. But i still think it MUST be unique. We left this morning. As always, a little film of the city.

As unique as it is, getting out was sort of a relief. I can breath again, for one, which you simply can't in Bangkok. You always sort of feel like you aren't getting enough oxygen to the brain because... well, because you aren't. How could you, when most of what you are taking in is diesel smog? and then there are the canals...

Most of our getting around we did either via the sky train, which is an elevated public transport system, and by the canals. The canals are navigated by long-tail boats - diesel (those diesel engines are everywhere!) powered boats, about 40 feet in length, that are also built narrow so they can squeeze by each other in this canal network that runs through the city. The canals are the most fetid, stinking bodies of water i've ever seen in my life, and stink like crap. In fact, at times, you can actually see crap in them. So the boats come equipped with these special screen things that you pull up when the boat is in motion since it is EVERYBODY's greatest fear to get even a small drop of the canal water on them. It would mean near certain death from a staph infection.

Those two "dirty" stories being told, Bangkok is really surprisingly clean. I think that we were expecting something along the lines of Mexico City, but found ourselves quite amazed for the most part. Our biggest "Holy Crap this place is freaky clean" moment came while visiting what must be the biggest, creepiest mall in the world in Siam Square. We knew we had entered a different realm when we took the elevator to the fourth floor of the mall and found four different high end car dealerships, complete with full showrooms. Ferrari's, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins, etc. on the fourth floor of this mall. Asia at its most classic - the world of contrasts. That mall was the most high end place I've ever been to. Serious. We thought we were in Tokyo or Seoul or something. The kind of stuff you see on the TV in the states. All glass and shine and spit clean. Needless to say, we didn't buy anything.

Bangkok is famous for scams and we experienced a few, though nothing that parted us with more than a dollar or two. Sometimes we felt like people were scamming us just because thats what you do there - they didn't seem to be after our money, but were just telling us fibs about this or that just to do it. We still don't quite have that one figured out. My favorite scam, though, was the Pigeon Scam. Yesterday on our way to visit the Grand Palace we walked through a giant flock of pigeons and, in the midst of chaos I was accosted by a couple who forced bags of corn kernels into my hands. When I said no, I actually didn't want to feed corn kernels to the pigeons at the moment, they took it a step further and dumped the bags of corn into my hand. Now i had a bunch of raw corn in my outstretched hand, with no where to go and nothing to do with it, and the pigeons started going APE SHIT. They were all over me, like some b show horror film. So i hucked the corn. And then I had to pay for it. Just to get away from the scene I gave them full asking price - 120 baht, or about 3 and a half dollars. A full rip off, done well, and we walked away laughing our asses off. Or i did. Christine wasn't that impressed...

So, for the trivia question of the day for you asia buffs - a singha to the first person that can tell us HOW THE HELL the economy works here. How can near everything be so cheap, but still so nice...How does a two dollar meal including a full plate and a beer live alongside a fourth floor lamborghini show room in the middle of the city? How does a $10 hotel room, with air conditioning and hot water, live alongside an excellent, clean and highly efficient and well built public transport system? Inquiring minds want to know

if you tell us, you win the award...

ian