Amazing Thailand, as the tourism commission slogan goes. And it really is amazing. I like this place! If I find a good beach to sack out on soon, I may not come back. The people are ultra-friendly, the food is divine (and just TOO easily available), and the sun is so nice and warm. I hear about blizzards in Montana and I just can't imagine what they feel like anymore. The closest I can get to it here is to bury my nose in a snow cone for a few minutes (although I've never before assiciated a Montana blizzard with sweet rice, coconut milk, and neon-colored jellied stuff).

Bangkok is a huge, noisy, exciting, modern, neon-lit metropolis of about 5 million, offering just about anything you care to indulge in, just as its reputation suggests. Yes, there are all the massage parlors, the red-light districts, and the roadside sleaze vendors (though its now reputed to have a lower rate of HIV infection than many other places in Thailand - supposedly 'cause they really are professionals here), but you can also find quaint bazaars, dimly-lit residential streets bordered by canals, and about half a million little roadside noodle stalls, complete with portable tables, chairs, and umbrellas. I've eaten more pad thai than I care to contemplate and I still love it, though it'll take even me a while to adopt the Thai habit of dumping a couple of teaspoons of sugar in it. No kidding! I feel like this trip has been, in part, a journey to discover how many different ways you can inject sugar into your bloodstream. Coffee here is served mixed with a quarter cup of sweetened condensed milk, poured over crushed ice, and then a big splash of, yep, sweetened condensed milk is layered on top. And if you want it to go, you get it in a plastic bag complete with handles and a straw. Though if you order fresh fruit (like half a pineapple, cut into little bite-sized chunks, for 25 cents), it comes with a little packet of reddish-tinted crystals for you to dip the fruit in. No, not sugar with flavoring like I was expecting, but salt mixed with chopped dried chillies. I tried it - it wasn't half bad, though I'm a little burned out (no, this is not a pun!) on chillies at the moment.

Occasionally I run across a vendor selling roasted insects and grubs, including ones over 2 inches long (the insects, not the vendors). Some even serve scorpions about the size of, oh, Texas, I think. (Isn't it funny how the prospect of eating something really gross instantly magnifies its dimensions...) Ok, I was expecting to see strange here, but only in the little mountain villages, not the modern capital city itself. And I certainly wasn't anticipating being expected to eat things that, if I saw on the ground in front of me, I'd be more likely to violently recoil from and flail at with a LONG stick than put in my mouth. But the kicker for "I wouldn't touch that if you PAID me" is the deep-fried little birds, like sparrows or the Asian equivalent. Never mind the fact that my bro and I tried roasting and eating one out in the woods when we were kids (or was it just me, Adam?) - its a whole different ballgame once you get past the bb-gun-in-the-woods age.

Currently, I'm in Petchaburi (or Petburi or Petchburi -whatever. Since Thai's don't use a Roman alphabet, their attempts to render signs legible to tourists usually result in wildly different spellings. "Thia fired rice" and "Wercome to Bangkok" are other examples.). This is a town of about the population of Missoula, though all similarities end right there. I'm lucky enough to be here during their annual festival, and its a real carnival atmosphere. Huge fair, lots of exhibits, thousands of people, fireworks from the nearby hilltop wat (temple), and every possible way (and excuse) to stuff your face imaginable. It put me in such a great mood that the next morning I went out and bought a few sheets of different stickers and decorated my bike, just for the hell of it. Got a bit carried away slapping them on, though, so now it looks more like a dragster with all its sponsors stuck on every square inch. (The redneck in the bitchin' camaro rears his head again...!) At any rate, people are gonna think my trip's being subsidized by Adidas, HGK motorsports, and several scantily-clad women. And don't think I'll be disabusing them of the notion, either! But I wonder it I overdid it - in the daylight, they all seem to stand out SO much more so than in the hotel room.... I think the crowning touch, however, is "The Pride of Merseyside" in 1/2 inch metallized letters that I cut from a Liverpool FC bumper sticker and pasted on my top tube for the world to see. (It seems that Thai's are world-class supporters of English football teams - Manchester United and Chelsea being the most popular in this region.)

Anyway, enough words for now - I think the pictures will tell the rest of the story better than I ever could.

Robyn, these are especially for you!