Thailand: Not what I expected

While in Laos I ate sticky rice with every meal, sometimes every day. It is incredibly good and I’m going to sorely miss it. The other thing incredibly good here are the street vendor pancakes with Nutella and banana! We’ve been eating a lot of those as well as stir fried chicken with cashew and vegetables a lot. My stomachs been okay until yesterday. Also the actual physical travelling ended up being very expensive and we had to buy 110+ dollar plane tickets to Phuket because it was just as much money to take two buses and a boat to get there, and took an hour instead of 2 days. Unfortunately at this point I need you guys to somehow figure out how to cash my cheque that dad hopefully picked up at the beginning of the month because I am not going to have enough money. Thailand has been much more expensive than Laos, especially for hotels, it’s difficult to even find 20 bed fan dorm rooms for less than 10 dollars a night. Thailand is also much more busy and overwhelming than Laos, no matter where you are, and the only laws that exist are drug laws and theft. Here you often see up to 4 people on a single motorbike, babies or adults or kids, no helmets and doing 110 km’s on the highway. The most surprising thing to me is that there are almost no accidents and I’ve only seen 4 ambulances in total since being here. I almost wish I lived here, it makes home seem like a pathetic joke with a bunch of stupid laws and everyone worrying too much about everything and spending ridiculous amounts of money on things that cost 10 cents to make in sweatshops.

 

However to end this email on a positive note, it is nothing like anyone made it out to be here. I have not once felt like I was in any kind of danger, (except for one cab driver who broke 200 km/hr on the highway and was swerving between cars). But other than that the only overwhelming thing is that EVERYONE and ANYONE wants to sell you something. Yesterday at a street vendor they were selling 6 inch knives, brass spiked knuckles, and legitimate ninja shurikens. It’s incredible to me how different the culture is, how they realize that violence isn’t necessary, respect exists here instead of just admiring all the rich old white guys at home living on the ridge in Edgemont. Even simple things like not breaking arcade machines, or trying to seem tough by wearing your hat sideways staring everyone down because you think you are a badass, and getting tribal tattoos.

 

I’ve been drinking a lot of cheap beer and am now lying in my dorm room after a fun night in a reggae bar full of Australians and cannot wait to see what tomorrow here will bring.

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