Last night in Bangkok

Back on Kao San Road, where the cheapest lodgings and cheesiest Thai souvenirs can be found. Having updated (halfheartedly, true, but still) yesterday, I've not much to add at this point. But I figured that writing from Bangkok gives the entry a cache of its own. So much so that I don't even really have to write anything. And I haven't! Whee!

Hm. Larium-induced psychosis? Urgh. I took my weekly malaria pill this morning. I didn't experience any side effects last week but who knows when the suicidal thoughts, nausea or bad dreams will start?

Today we went to the temple of the Golden Buddha (Wat Traimit), where a 5-ton golden Buddha sits. About forty years ago, a stucco statue fell from a crane, cracked, and revealed the solid gold underneath. It's theorized that the statue was covered to protect it from marauders... way back when. (Lonely Planet says that it was during the late Sukhothai or Ayuthaya period, but I'm too lazy to look up when those periods were. Sorry.) The face of the Buddha was, as it usually is, mezmerizing. Why is that? Is it just me, or do you also feel a sense of peace looking at his face?

After Wat Traimit, we went to the Teak Mansion, a Victorian-style three-story mansion built for Rama V, the king of Thailand who died from kidney cancer in 1910. I know this fact because the Thai guides repeated it about every 4 minutes on the English language tour. The mansion is quite beautiful. I wish I could have understood the guides better, but their accents and the large size of the tour group made it difficult. Being in the completely western-style mansion (boasting the first indoor western bathroom in Thailand!) made me think of my old academic interest, imperialism. The mansion was built in the late 19th century. In Korea at about the same time, the Joseon royalty were also adopting western technology and such, like cars. And... oh, I was going somewhere with this, but it's too hard... on vacation. Mind included. Will come back to it at some point.

I can't believe it's Dec. 23 -- there is a fake Christmas tree in the hotel lobby, and we just ate at an expat bar where there was a fake white tree on the bar, but it doesn't feel like Christmas at all. This is good. Have I mentioned how much I hate the holidays? There's always some sort of family drama going on, and not that there isn't drama at other times of the year, but around the holidays you feel like there shouldn't be drama, because it's Christmas for chrissakes, dammit, Christmas!

We had originally scheduled to be in Ankor Wat on Christmas, but flight hub realities led us to move stuff around. Now we are -- wait a sec. I'm behind again. We were going to be in Ankor Wat, but then we changed the plan and were going to be on the beach in Sihanoukville on the 25th, but then we changed plans again and we'll actually be flying from Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia) to Ankor Wat on the 25th. So, ancient temples for Christmas after all.

This morning we were both a bit down, as we realized that no, we can't see everything we want to see in three weeks. Boooo!!! So we decided to hit the areas on the cusp of overtourism first (Cambodia and Laos) and then head over to Vietnam, which is much more developed.

I've been trying to use Thai occasionally, like with taxi drivers who speak hardly any English. I didn't know before coming here that Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese and Cambodian (I think), are, like Chinese, tonal languages. Thai sounds a little bit like Chinese, but softer. It's fun trying to swing my voice up and down and straight and low and high, but also terrifically hard. English romanizations of Thai words don't really swing it. It is really fun, though. I would like to learn Chinese some day.

It's such a luxury being able to stay in touch with people while I'm over here. That, as well as being with Wendy, who stayed here for a whole month during her last trip to Thailand, takes a bit away from the feeling that I'm in a foreign country. It's odd. During the first cab ride, from the airport to the hotel, I felt like I was in Los Angeles -- the traffic, the smog, the family sitting in the bed of a truck... Bangkok is like any other big city in the world, and big cities share more in common with each other, even if they're in different countries, than, say, a rural farming town and a big city in the same country. It's been fun here, and I was dazzled by the golden Buddhas and the fantastical architecture, but I'm also looking forward to seeing something totally different. I think Cambodia and Laos will probably hold quite a few surprises for me.