BANGKOK, THAILAND

Khaosan Road, Bangkok, at night
Wat Bowonniet. A Buddhist university

An ubiquitous tuk tuk
With a bucket in Khaosan Road
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A very common sight here, in the Khaosan Road area of Bangkok (sleazy++), is really old chaps, my age, with a Thai nymph hooked onto one arm and a pocket of viagra, with a bemused look on their faces, hardly able to believe that their dreams are about to be fulfilled . Some faces looked quite familiar, but for a suitable kickback no names will be dropped. You may ask what i was doing there, well, someone has to do the sociological studies!

Khaosan Road is an area of all that us goody goodies tut tut about: loud music, drugs, money changers, stalls of bootleg cd's, dvd's, designer label clothes, 24 hour excess drinking, weirdos, cross dressers, tattoo lounges, food hawkers, even Rastafarian dreadlocks, unfortunately my hair is both too short and too sparse for me to have got it attached successfully, as i fully intended to go fully underground!

The heat here has found me low in the spirit of exploring further this city of 6 million. Just keeping up with reading guidebooks and talking with fellow travellers, to study the road ahead and to get up to date information, this takes a large part of my time. I am looking forward to getting on a train once again, this is my preferred method of travel. It is more akin to being on board a ship moving sedately, things coming into view and passing by slowly, while one continues in a straight line. You can read, doze, eat, read, chat, dream, walk about. I have not been on a train since leaving China. The alternative is like being driven by Toad of Toad Hall, braking hard, cutting in, dangerous overtaking, crushed together with others suffering the same anxieties, bumps and dust, as well as trying not to think about how long it might be before the next loo stop.