the random oracle

I have a lot to write about Thailand, but time is short right now so I’ll just share some short tidbits:

• I like the idea of street food.  There are so many stalls at every street corner that you’re never more than 50m away from some yummy goodness.  And they have a lot of fresh fruit available at the stalls, which is a good thing for fruits like me.  The dessert stalls are awesome, there is this amazing fried banana thing that I’ll definitely have to import back to the states.
• That said, a lot of the food gets repetitive after a while… I guess for variety you have to branch out into the Chinese or Indian inspired stuff.
• Boys in Bangkok are cuter than boys in Beijing.  I think they’ve figured out that working out and a little stubble go a long way.
• People are better-dressed in Bangkok than in Beijing.
• Nightlife in Bangkok beats out nightlife in Beijing any night of the week.
• People are not as smiley as they’re reputed to be; in fact in Bangkok I’d say they weren’t any more smiley than in Beijing.  In Pai they were indeed nicer, but I think that might have something to do with being in the countryside, not with being in Thailand.
• There are so many Westerners everywhere we went, it’s like the place is being colonized!  In Pai most of the time LB and I were the only Asian people who were eating at the restaurants and not working in them.
• Bangkok is amazingly clean even though it’s almost impossible to find a public trash can anywhere in the city.
• As a relatively young city (by Asian standards), there’s not much history and sightseeing to do in Bangkok; I found the malls and nightlife much more impressive than the temples and palaces.
• That said, the temples and palaces were nice; much more colorful than their Chinese counterparts.