Bang-wha?

In all of our travel preparing and researching for his trip, we consistently hear about the three month slump.  The point in the trip when you'd rather get stuck with a pushy salesmen in a timeshare pitch than have to spend another minute looking at your travel companion's face.   You begin to swear the hostels are only stocking the seventh century bunk-beds  in attempts to intentionally give you scoliosis.  On top of it all, that homesick feeling has finally crept from your subconscious to compel you to waste hours a day weeping over your friends' FaceBook pages.  Let me tell you, three and a half months into this trip, I am not there yet.

Bangkok was supposed to be the breaking point.  The travel books warned us about the commotion.  Our Thailand savvy friends said it would be a huge system shock after we'd spent the last month beach bumming.  They were right.  It is a vast city, larger than I'd initially imagined.  The smog levels are high, the population has got to be approximately 1 billion and you would be hard pressed to fine serenity amongst all of the shopping malls and strip clubs.  Trouble is, we love it.  True, there are a lot of cars, motorcycles and festively decorated tuk-tuks flooding the un-patrolled expressways, but Bangkok's public transportation system is more efficient and certainly cleaner than even your dentist's office.  More importantly though, the overpopulation simply means there are an infinite number of quaint markets and aromatic food carts.  

Because I like you, I'm going to share our secret to success.  We simply avoid eating anyplace where the patrons are cargo short wearing, white tourists.  The cargo shorts bit was an embellishment, but it somehow seemed less racist than just saying that we are avoiding white people (?).  This method however does require a lot of sign language and big toothy grins, but has yet to fail us.  The food is always the best meal I've ever had and no feast has ever been more than $2 (and if I want to be a dick about it, I'd mention that we've had most of our delectable meals for less than a dollar).  Pad Thai for breakfast... why not?  Now I know what you're all thinking after my last post.  Call me a masochist, call me a fat kid, just don't take away my delicious Thai street food.  In return, I promise not to share so many details the next time a parasite finds it's way into my digestive tract.    

There is indeed more to Bangkok than the food (though I am not insinuating that the following are more important) such as the amazing flower and produce markets, the crazy night bazars and the famous Lumphini Park.  Lumphini Park is where the Thai congregate for daily aerobics right alongside the waterways that are home to many huge, amphibious Water Monitors.  You would think these Water Monitors are completely harmless with the locals' lackadaisical attitude toward them.  Usually the banks are lined with napping park goers and frolicking children who are undisturbed by the presence of the large lizards.  Kelly and I would like to think we're that cool, but in reality they make us jump with awkward surprise.  Taking pictures of these things was an adrenaline rush itself.  Growing to over 10 feet long and weighing up to 195 pounds, we assumed that these monstrosities must be harmless if they were taken so lightly.  After a brief Google search to ease our minds, we found that they are not in fact the cuddly cousins of the Komodo Dragon.  The saliva of a water monitor carries enough toxin-producing bacteria to send you into certain sepsis.  Wikipedia described them as defensive carnivores that use their tails, claws and jaws when fighting.  Despite this highly alarming tidbit the locals will bring bags of meat with them for the miniature dinosaurs as if they were simply feeding pigeons bread crumbs (which is still a dirty and dangerous activity if you ask me).  If we've learned anything from the depths of Bangkok it is that you cannot intimidate the Thai, even with large, poisonous reptiles.  Something we'll be sure to remember at customs.