So I made it to Thailand and I've been here for almost 3 days now. It's really hot here, it was rough walking around the streets of bangkok dodging hookers, tuk-tuks, and Thai midgets throwing beer. Actually, there were very few midgets throwing beer, but a lot of hookers and tuk tuks. Anyway it was hot, and I was drinking like a camel after a 6 day trek through the lower sahara.

I met up with Shaul at the airport, and we went straight to Khao San road where all the backpackers go. We found a decent hostel and took a room only to find that it was an Israeli hostel. I thought I had gotten rid of those crackheads last week, but now I was in for 2 more days of it. Literally every other person at the hostel was Israeli or Asian...the placemats and all the signs were in hebrew, it was weird. People would come up and talk to us first in Hebrew, only to realize we don't speak it and say "o, you speak english, sorry" and walk away. So we didn't make any new friends there...

The first things we did were get some cheap Pad Thai off the street (I've been eating this almost every meal) and get a massage...not a "massage" but a real massage. It was good got the oils and everything for 30min for only about $2.50.

We decided to go to the Red-light area to check it out, but it was so sketchy...much more than Amsterdam was. We walked into a strip club and 5 naked girls walk up to you, sit down and demand that you buy them a drink...this is after paying almost $10 to get in the door. We stayed for about 5 minutes and left...it was a good lesson though, we learned that almost everything in the city is a scam.

The next day went to this big weekend market, which was pretty interesting, but we realized we'll have the same thing in China so there was really no point to go to these markets. Most anything we could buy there, we can get in China for the same price. So we decided no more markets for the rest of the trip. Plus they smell really bad b/c of all the fish stuff. From there we went to the Grand Palace which was beautiful. Everything was gold and glittery...took a lot of great pictures, and chilled in the temple for a few minutes. For lunch we had some street soup which was really sketchy. We were the only western people eating it, and all the thai people around were really surprised we were trying it. It was spicy as hell, I couldn't finish more than half of it...and I watched a Thai girl pour two huge spoonfuls of spice into hers, couldn't believe it. We were afraid the soup would give us food poisoning or some kind of illness (after we gave our bowl/spoon back the lady juse wiped them with the same dirty rag she used for every bowl and put it back on the stack), but two days later we're still ok.

That afternoon we went over to Shaul's cousin's house, who live in a beautiful neighborhood north of Bangkok. Stayed there for a few hours, swam in their pool, then went back into the city to go see some Muay Thai boxing. It was awesome...and by awesome I mean awesomely brutal. These guys really beat the shit out of each other. None of the pussy stuff we call boxing. We watched about 6 matches of the 11, and were too hungry to watch anymore...all they had to eat were snacks. So we went back to Khao San rd. and grabbed some more Pad Thai, and another massage (one of the most painful things i've ever done, Thai massage is really just about hitting every pressure point on the body, and contorting your limbs in ways they aren't supposed to be contorted) then went to sleep early.

Next day we left Bangkok for the beach...we'd had enough of this city. There were scam artists on every corner, which was incredibly annoying. We got so used to just ignoring people trying to scam us or sell us something that we were pretty rude at first to the few people that were talking to us and just being nice. So we got on a bus to Ko Samet (an island to the east), which took about 5 hours...got here and it's been great. We just chilled on the beach and at a bar last night. The only bad thing is the mosquitoes, but we have a mosquito net over the bed. So that's what I'm up to now, just chilling out by the beach and hiking around this island. Next we're heading over to cambodia for Angkor Wat either tomorrow or the next day.