Bangkok, Thailand

So I've still got a bit of a cold. So sucks. Took the train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok yesterday, and I don't think the guy beside me was too impressed that I was coughing and sniffling the whole way down for 12 hours.

Splurged on a nice hotel for the last two nights. Actually, I was kinda forced into it because I couldn't find a guest house that had a room available. It's now the really busy season for tourism in Thailand, so I was trying to book a room while I was still in Chiang Mai. After about 7 or 8 phone calls, I gave up and went to a travel agent, who booked me into this hotel.

I'm on the 18th floor of the Suriwongse Tower Inn, and for $30 I get a 3-star equivalent hotel room. Not your average backpacker place -- there's hot water in the sink (normally there's only been hot water in the shower), a kitchen & fridge, an american breakfast included, clean sheets and towels every day...

The last night in Chiang Mai I was too sick to see the end of the festival. It continued to rain all evening, which put a bit of a damper on things. It was fun hanging out with the Dutch guy and Finnish girl though -- the night before me and the Dutch guy won Chang Beer tshirts, you had to score more than 80 in 3 darts. We just had fun counting in Thai. (Counting is pretty easy, once you know 1 to 10, then e.g. 11 is just ten-one, 34 is three-ten-four.) And for some reason we switched to speaking in spanish for the rest of the night. Which was very odd to me (although I'm sure the alcohol had something to do with it).

Took the BTS Skytrain from my hotel to the very large Chatuchak weekend market this morning. The Skytrain is pretty efficient, and there's plenty of english signage. Also at the interchange, they actually swap the lines for changing. So for example the eastbound and northbound are on the same platform, and the westbound and southbound are another platform. Which makes more sense then what we have in Toronto, where the east- and westbound are on the same platform -- how often do you switch from east to west? At least this way 50% of the time you don't need to switch platforms. It was also really clean, and only 40 baht for the ride from my hotel to the market (it's zoned pricing).

The Lonely Planet claims the Chatuchak market has over 15,000 stalls. I spent about 3 hours wandering around, and saw maybe 20% of it. It was jam packed with people. The prices were pretty good -- not as cheap as the festival market in Chiang Mai, but close enough. Now I just have to figure out how to get all this stuff home. Dang these large souvenirs.

Hope to get in one last massage this evening, and then it's a long 19 hour flight to Chicago tomorrow...