A day of nothing

Day 29 (28/04/08): Bangkok, Thailand

Unfortunately, today's entry is going to be rather boring. After all the busy past few days, and with a lot of late nights, I spent most of today sleeping. After waking up, I failed to do anything of any real value. I wandered around the streets, got some cheap noodles, looked in shops but didn't buy anything. As boring as that sounds, Khaosan road is such a crazy place, with so much stuff happening all the time, that even just walking up and down the street, taking in all the sounds, sights and smells can be a very interesting experience. Although you do have to develop a sort of 'tunnel vision', to avoid the touts. In all the tourist areas, and especially Khaosan road, wherever you go there will be locals trying to sell you all sorts of things, offer you tuktuk rides or hand fliers to you. In my opinion, engaging them with any sort of verbal response, even if you are saying 'no', just encourages them futher. My preferred tactic is to never make eye contact and merely ignore anything that they are yelling from their stall, stand, rickshaw or dedicated piece of pavement. If they are quite determined, a quick shake of the head or wave of the hand normally gets the message across. It isn't particularly polite, but I figure they aren't being very polite either.

In the evening I bumped into a few people I had known from other places in my travels, and we sat down and had a few beers together. Later on, we bumped into the Swedes and Canadians from the previous night, and before you knew it, I was up till the early hours of the morning again. It is a really weird experience, you know somebody for only two days, and get on with them really well, and spend a fair bit of time together. And then, just like that, you each go in your own direction, and chances are you will never see them again, ever. Although one of the Swedish guys is also going to China, and we might be there at the same time, so will meet up if we can.