First Impressions

Omg Thailand. Is totally livable.

I guess, most recently coming from a life in Delhi, that we were sort of expecting the worst. While India gets some things brilliantly right, Delhi is not one of them, and instead left us constantly in need of a vacation.  

First impressions – no staring! It is an inexplicable relief to enter the outside world and not immediately become a curiosity. I can cross a street, eat a meal, even look at a map without receiving all the negatives of stardom and none of the benefits. This instantly makes Thailand infinitely more livable. As we continued to walk around, we also noticed that cars were operating quite amicably without the need for blaring horns. Fancy that! Being able to hear each other, not to mention our own thoughts, isn’t really a luxury I guess most people would notice. So thanks, Delhi, for making us appreciate every other overpopulated over-polluted city so much more, if only for being slightly less disgusting than you.  

Really, though, Bangkok doesn’t seem to be as bad as everyone says it is. For one, I guess the heat is bearable. It’s kinda like stepping into one of those butterfly atriums except someone turned the temperature up too high and killed all the butterflies. Second, the food scene is amazing! In India there were pretty much only a couple street food items per region, and the only ones that were really viable for hearty consumption in Delhi were momos (which stood us in good stead!). Here food options abound. Noodle soup, meat soup, assorted Asian-style as-yet undefinable dishes…most of it looks great, and all of it is under a dollar or two. Supermarkets have marked up kraft mac and cheese, vegetables, floss, coronas, tequila, boneless meat, kiwis, and avocados, just to name a few - all missed horribly whilst in India! Today for lunch, we picked out a delicious soup composed of broth, greens, and assorted pig organs. Ariel said the duodenum was the most flavorful while I myself found the soft kidneys more delightful to eat. For dinner we meandered around Chinatown, turning our noses up at the competition until we found what was to be our epic choice – which, sorry, is indescribable. It sort of had…well, no. Okay it had little tiny prawns and what may have been either noodles or strips of…seafood, as well as tofu and crispy fishy tasting things. Yup. You’ll have to just see the picture. Anyway, it was delicious, and the sit-down-on-the-street meal came with iced tea and totaled about 80 cents for the both of us. Needless to say, so far we’ve been pretty good at sticking to our budget.  

It has been incredibly strange to stay in a real hotel with wifi in the lobby that we can just link up our little iPhones too. There’s even wifi in the ubiquitous (ps if you think Starbucks are the definition of ubiquitous you will need to reconsider) 7-11s, although we haven’t figured out how that works yet.  So far, a very different experience from our usual. Hopefully this will have the intended effect, i.e. will not result in a 4 month long sickness, the loss of 20 pounds, or the loss of contact with the outside world. Also, 7-11s are amazing. After finding reeses, milk not in a bag, big gulps (which are like 6 ounces) that you can fill with milk tea, bobby pins, sandwiches, microwaveable burgers, and quite frankly far more items than should be in a store of that size, I think we realized that living here will be okay. And, quite possibly, a little bit fun.

-Julia

Julia waiting for the SkyTrain

They have Spam! For a ridiculous amount of money (like $6). Isn't the point of Spam the fact that it's cheap?

Julia with the tiniest cake in the world

First meal in Thailand! Composing of pig parts. Yum!

Dinner for the day. Julia's indescribable deliciousness from above.

Instead of Slurpees, they have instant green tea and thai tea! We'll have to try these and see how they compare with the genuine street tea.

Escalator to nowhere

Wanted to get a pic of us for the day! We look ridiculously happy.

A wai-ing Ronald McDonald

Some goodies we found in the nearest 7/11. Which comes as a surprise when you're expecting India-availability on items!

I think the fact that we can get Reese's says it all

 Spending habits:

It's ridiculous that ATMs give out a default of 1,000 baht (about $35) because we could barely manage to spend 1/3rd of that between the two of us in a day. Not to mention during our first day in Thailand, when we're excited to buy everything.

For instance, today we spent 132 baht on transportation and 188 baht on food. We splurged on buying two huge thai beers for 112 baht, our biggest purchase of the day. Making our total expenditure since we've been here 612 baht (and those too lazy to calculate, about $20).