Hello from Bangkok,

In a few short days, we have come to feel comfortable in Bangkok. My first thought was “get me out of here!” but that is probably the way it always starts. It’s rather like a never-ending carnival, lively and colorful and it seems people from all over the world are spending time here. I don’t believe I have yet heard more different languages in a single day or seen more dreadlocks, piercings, or tanned, tattooed families with babies in backpacks. There are quite a number of very interesting, though pale, older people too. The streets are teeming, yet they seem calm and they are well swept. The stream of traffic moves at a sane pace and unlike many busy cities there is not incessant horn honking going on. Taxi-cabs are hot pink and lime green.

The Thais themselves seem to be working hard while the rest of us are on holiday. Thai people love their food and they can cook it fantastically from scratch in simple kitchens on the street. Every waking hour in the length of just a few paces cooks are frying chicken and fresh seafood, stirring great steaming pots of broth for noodle soups while gathering up handfuls of fresh green vegetables and red, hot peppers to toss in. They are tending broad metal pans of coconut curries and slicing mangoes and pineapple and calling out to one another. In the midst of them all a tiny lady crouches on the sidewalk deftly wrapping little balls of sticky, sweetened nuts in a bit of leaf to offer for dessert. A fringe of lacey, dried fish is strung above her head. For a few dollars you can taste all of it!

Most of the time we eat standing up at streetside stall but by mid-afternoon after having started off on the day’s explorations early in the morning, it has become our easy habit to take up a stool just off the street to enjoy a cold beer with our curry and noodles and watch the carnival passing by.

The side streets are narrow and lined with more stalls and vendors of all kinds and diminish to still narrower alleyways which become small neighborhoods. Children play just inside the doorsill while elders on stools, deep in conversation, pull apart to let you pass through. The familiar routes through the winding alleyways to our hostel’s neighborhood feel comfortable even after dark. Just enough soft light spills from the doorways to show our path home.

We are staying near the Chao Praya, the great brown river that flows through Bangkok. The breeze off the water is cool and it is a good night for sleeping while the moths still flit under the lights.

There is so much more to tell about Bangkok of course but those will be stories for other times. Tomorrow we fly to Rangoon.

Goodnight, love Monika and Randy