One Night in Ba...

Ok so I can't bring myself to actually finish the line, but we were really hoping and waiting to hear that cheezy song the whole time in Thailand. But not once! Despite this extreme disappointment, we still managed to have a good time somehow.
First, we all left work many hours early last monday (the 26th) and made our way to Narita airort and poured through the guidebook through the 6 hour flight, since we were basically flying with almost no set plans. 1. Bangkok 2. beach. that was about as far as we got maybe...
BUT secretly part of my motivation to make the push to travel so far on such notice was to see my long time friend Lara, who happened to be finishing up her little tour of SE Asia at the time. Other big factors include getting away from the never ending Japanese winter and work.
Here's Shane, me, and Lara on the streets of Khao San rd, a dirty piece of Bangkok set aside for late minute arrivals and dirty backpackers. A lot of Japanese hippies like to get dreads on this street.Here's Amber in front of one of the many ridiculously gaudy and golden buildings that make up part of the old imperial palace grounds. The entrance is free for Thai people and about 9 or 10 dollars for non Thai.Here's Shane looking good. To be honest the stuff there was pretty impressive.
Here's some golden Buddha heads that made up the snake feet of a larger golden being of some kind. ... Awesome.
I only like this picture because of the Thai guy (waiter i think) standing in the back. Thai people seem about a million times more laid back than the Japanese, which was apparent as early as our flight over, when people were just hanging around the aisles, watching others play cards and just generally chatting.
Anyway our most Bangkoky experiences really happened thanks to my friend from college Paradon, who happens to be living and working in the city at the moment. We met up with him after he finished work, and we set out for dinner. He guided us along the new Skytram, and then paid for us to hop on the back of some motorcycles who zipped us to our destination. The driving and especially motorcycle hopping in this city is best done in Buddhist style: closing your eyes and removing your mind from the buzz of cars and smell of fumes all around you. Very Bangkok. Then Paradon treated us to a dinner filled with lots of crazy looking foods, almost all of which were spicy, and some of which I found to spicy to comfortably eat. Very different from Japanese cooking, which prefers "subtle" flavors rather than blasting your senses like so many other Asian foods. After a touch of wandering afterwards we met up with Paradon again and made our way to what he assured me was "at least the second best" gay dance club in all Bangkok. No small boast in a large city that exposes it's sexuality more than most Asian cities.
I have no pictures of all this unfortunately, so you'll just have to take my word I suppose. I'm not used to being surrounded by hundreds of guys, all with perfectly sculpted torsos. But despite being insecure about my own hairy flabby stomach, I enjoyed myself and was even instructed on how to give a lapdance. Not sure I could really capture that spirit that really lets someone do something like that though. Oh well, I've got time to improve!

The next day we headed for the beaches, perhaps the primary purpose of our trip. But that'll have to wait till next time. My bed calls. Er, my stack of futons. oyasumi!
Aaron