Bangkok!

Having left the Middle East, we're now into the meat of our trip, where we'll be taking much smaller hops than the 6 hour flight (with a 4 hour time change!) coming here from Bahrain.  This is our second time in Bangkok, and it's been very different from our first visit.
  Last time both Norma and I were here on business, and we only had time for a little bit of sight-seeing. This time, we focused on seeing interesting things and places, and visiting with Jonathan, our Costa Rican exchange student who has been living here the past 5 years.  

We started the visit off with dinner over at Jon's apartment, which was just a short cab ride from our hotel in the heart of Bangkok.  It was great to see him, and we spent the following two days touring interesting neighborhoods, parks and gardens (the Jim Thompson house is a must see!),
and taking a canal cruise at sunset - very cool!  While it is quite hot here (about 95F each day, and very humid!), and we often used cabs, tuk-tuks, or elevated trains to get around, we still got quite a bit of walking in, and we started grazing from street food vendors (yum!! We're looking forward to lots of that!). 

While Bangkok is very large and clearly the seat of modern Thai culture, it is amazingly diverse in its neighborhoods, with influences from around southeast Asia, and around the world.
  Traffic is pure chaos at times, but manages to move just enough that it never quite reaches gridlock, despite there being few traffic signals or road rules that anyone really pays attention to. 
It's also not a great pedestrian city, but it's possible to get around many places on foot if you keep well aware of your surroundings and constantly vigilant about the scooters and motorcycles, which swarm everywhere!  We even spent an hour or so today visiting one of the nicest large urban parks I've seen in a long time- and it's brand new on over 200 acres of reclaimed industrial land in the heart of the city.

So... While a bit of a sensory overload, we really enjoyed Bangkok. Still, we're now looking forward to chilling out on a tropical island for the next week as we travel tomorrow to Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand.
Cheers!

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