Bangkok

So the main thing that I have learned in the last few weeks is that you cant get jetlagged if you dont sleep. It works much better.

I am now in Bangkok. I have been here about 18 hours. My flight got in at 11PM and I think I had a pretty typical first few hours. Customs and everything was no problem. Got in a cab to take me to the hotel. It drops me off and tells me to walk down the street, everything is perfect. My hotel is no where to be found. Dammit. I walk for about 15 minutes, get into another cab who drives around in a huge circle, drops me off at the same place but this time gives me directions (in Thai). I follow them to a hotel that has a very similar name to mine, but I talk to someone inside who gives me new directions. While walking down a back alley, I pass two teenagers with automatic weapons. I think they were fake. I check into my hotel about 1 AM and go to sleep about 45 minutes later when my heart rate was no longer 200.

The next morning I talk to a couple of very unhelpful travel agents, wander around and get a cab to go to STA travel so that I can change my tickets to stay in Africa for longer. We hit serious traffic, and they just closed when we finally get there. The cab takes me to a bunch of spots for commission that I need to talk him out of and pulls out a brochure of hookers and asks if I am interested. After finally getting him to go back to my hotel, he tries to charge me extra because we hit traffic. I was not in the mood for that. Jesse would be quite satisfied, that for once everything was not going right for me.

But then I found a new hostel that I like much better. They have a very nice travel agent so I talked with her for a while and tomorrow morning I am going into a National Park in the area I wanted to visit, west from Bangkok near the Myanmar border. We are hiking, floating on bamboo rafts, riding on elephants, etc. I suppose I may write a post in a few days about that. I wish I spoke a little Thai, that would help.