Food on a stick

sawadee ka (hello in thai) to everyone!

We are in Bangkok and what a wild ride it was to get to here. After a long-haul of thirty-plus hours, we arrived at a guesthouse called Cozy Bangkok Place (www.cozybangkok.com) and went to bed around four in the morning local time. ouch. Since arriving, our senses have been bombarded and overwhelmed by everything. The air is so dirty you can see clouds of pollution blow down the sidewalks and between the cars and tuk-tuks (3-wheeled motorcycle taxis) on the busy streets. There are street vendors all over and it's pretty hard to determine what the food is they are actually selling. Just about any food you can think of can be found on a stick. Today we are moving to a guesthouse near the infamous Koh San Road where all of the backpackers/white people like us are--it's pretty wild. Loud techno and American pop-music blair out of speakers at small clothing stalls. All of the white travellers can be found within this three-block radius whereas, in the rest of the city, there are very few to be seen.

Tomorrow night we are catching the night train to the northern city of Chiang Mai where we will then catch a truck that will take us up to the Panya Project Ecovillage (see link on side of page). We hope to be helping out up there for a few days, but we'll just have to see how it goes. Life is very in-the-moment--not quite sure what will happen next so we're pretty much along for the ride. Culture-shock and jet-lag are still with us, but through that fog we are discovering a totally different culture on the other side of the world. We are so glad we're here, but it's a shocking start.

That's all for now.

Cailin and Misra