Bangkok bound

Somewhere around Nov 14th (I've by now lost all sense of date and time) we arrived for a 3 day stint in Bangkok. It's everything that everyone says it is, so much activity, so much pollution, amazingly cheap and tasty food available on the street every 10m for a mere dollar or two!

It was an unusual time with the cremation ceremony of the 84yr old sister of the king. The main temple and royal palace were closed for 5 days and so we didn't get to see them, however on the other hand for the weekend all the major streets were closed with hundreds of thousands walking around in black coming to observe the ceremony/cremation.

We experienced the usual rides from Tuk-tuk drivers and breathed in amazing amounts of 2 cycle engine fumes, saw enough wats (temples) and buddha statues to last us for a lifetime and sweated in the sticky humid 32 degree weather! The streets feel very safe and the thai people are polite and gentle...when they try to sell you things they are not pushy and so in that sense it is more pleasant walking around than say in arab contexts where you can feel much more hassled.

We rode the water bus down the river to the modern section of town (like any modern city) and experienced the stark contrast from the more traditional thai area of town where are hotel was. We tried out the sky train over to a large central park for some calm and quiet and observed 1m long lizards scouring the grass for tasty eats (not humans like us thankfully!).

Chinatown was another level yet of chaos, noise, crowds and small stalls selling every kind of merchandise and food one could imagine. We had some kind of noodle dish with chicken on the sidewalk, tasty and hot for a mere 3$ for the 2 of us!. So far we have had no issues or side effects from the food (knock on wood!)

Well by now you are hearing about the political turmoil in Bangkok. As usual, the news makes it seem like the whole country is in turmoil when in fact the activity is quite localized. Nonetheless, very clever of the protesters to choke the country via the main airport as such a large aspect of the GDP is based on tourism. Most people that we talk to say that business is way down, and our experience has been that there are very few evidences of full hotels or restaurants.

This protest is very much urban, upscale Bangkok vs the rural poor. Most of the rest of the country has no issue with the current gov't (which is spreading a lot of new benefits to the rural areas such as health care and education...and so it would seem rather undemocratic to try to topple a recently, freely elected gov't. But what do we know!, the protesters say the gov't is corrupt and perhaps they are?. Well, right now we feel no effects and probably shouldn't affect us.

After 3 days we were ready to slow down the pace and escape the pollution somewhat so we booked an overnight train to the north to Chiang Mai, the 2nd largest city and religious center of thailand.