Thailand: Bangkok

We caught a flight from HCMC to Bangkok and hopped a cab to the backpacker part of town to find a hotel. Our cab driver took a quick bathroom break on the way into the city, stopping on the side of the highway to go #1 in the bushes....anyways, we found a good cheap hotel for around $17 per night and set out to walk around the city. The city is much more developed than Vietnam, most people have cars instead of motorbikes, they have a tourist police, and most places are relatively well maintained. We quickly learned that Bangkok is much worse than Vietnam with the heckling and harassing from cab drivers, tuk tuk drivers and anyone trying to sell something. As soon as you step out of your hotel there is a non-stop hoard of people trying to sell you on eating at their restaurant, sex shows, clothes, useless carved wooden objects etc... If you stop to look at a map, the salesman swarm you saying "what are you looking for? Where are you going? Let me show you the city". After several hours of this we started crafting more entertaining responses to their questions like "we are going to Mexico, take us there" or "we are looking for the holy grail". We did eventually get to do a walking tour of the city which was extremely challenging since most roads are not labeled, most maps are not accurate and the roads that are labeled are often only labeled in the Thai language. We did see a mother holding a plastic bag for her son who was probably around 8 years old, peeing into the plastic bag...on the side of the street, not covering up, not facing the wall, just out in the open peeing into a bag...not sure what thats all about. The food is quite good in Bangkok and the pad thai here is almost the exact same as in the States, only here it costs around $1. We enjoyed several meals of street food for very cheap. Apparently, Seven Eleven's are very profitable in Thailand. There is a 7/11 on almost every block in the city and on the busy streets, sometimes even more. We saw several places where there would be two 7/11's staring right across the street from each other. They provide the cheapest beer in town and a nice air-conditioned relief from the heat. Our last night in Bangkok we met a nice group from Chile in South America and spent most of the night shooting pool and hearing about life in Chile. Lady boys are all over Bangkok and are quite disturbing to look at... After a good breakfast at Dunking Doughnuts in the Bangkok airport, we caught a flight to Chiang Mi which is north of Bangkok and home to many outdoor activities such as riding elephants, playing with tigers and monkeys, and bungee jumping.