Sawat Dii!

I'm finally here! I arrived last night at my guesthouse at 3am and I was only slightly tired since I was able to sleep on the flights and the fact that my body thought it was 3pm helped me a bit. I showered (heaven!) and went to bed. Very exciting.

I awoke around 9am, dressed and headed out to walk the streets and get my bearings. I'm situation in the Banglumpoo area of Bangkok, the traveller's ghetto and boy they aren't kidding. Tons of foreigners, scam artists and shops trying to get you to part with your hard eaned baht are everywhere. It's overwhelming. I have this sneaky suspicion that once I get out of Bangkok into the countryside, I'll see the real Thailand. The city itself is really polluted and steamy, kinda ick. After walking forever, I found this nice park by the river to rest since the heat saps your energy pretty quickly. Water is only 20 baht (75 cents) for a big bottle and I got pad thai with chicken for dinner for 25 baht. Breakfast was free in my guesthouse so I'm not doing bad on money so far!

The one thing that has thrown me into a tizzy the last day was not being able to make any calls from my cell phone. After messing with all the settings and applying every exit and country code combo to dial out, I still got nothing and all I wanted to do was call my parents to let them know I was OK! I bit the bullet and called Verizon and they said there was a local system outage and I wouldn't be able to use the phone in Bangkok! I had her check some of the other cities I plan on visiting and they local networks are working fine in those places. Whew. I can handle that. So glad it's not a bigger issue.

Tomorrow I am taking a cycling tour of Historic Bangkok and maybe taking a boat up the river for a relaxing bit of sightseeing. I've already decided my crowded and dirty home for the next 3 days isn't really my scene so I'll be using this time to fully adjust my sleep cycle, relax and prepare for the next leg of my journey. I will post some pics tomorrow!