Day Trip to Bangkok

For 8 and a half baht I take a bus from my town, Salaya, to Bangkok, about an hour away. At first the bus is reasonably empty. I get a seat near the window and admire the photogenic sparkling chrome of the sealing, with old dusty fans spinning in circles above our heads; I admire the lights above the drivers head--yellow, red, green, blue. Only the yellow one lights up when a passenger pushes the stop button, so I don't know what the other three are four. The bus begins to fill. A teenage girl with baggy camouflage shorts and a long t-shirt sits next to me, and as the bus fills up we're pressed against each other and the place where our legs touch is sweaty--probably from me. I try to stick my arm out the window, but the window is a bit too far in front of me so it is an awkward position. My bag rests on my lap, the cool water bottle inside reminding me I should've brought a straw. Most Thai people don't drink water the way Americans do, pouring the water directly into our mouths from the opening in the bottle. They drink it with straws. Likewise for soda from a can. And beer they drink with a bucket of ice near by, dropping ice cubes in the beer cube-by-cube to keep the beer cool before they finish it. It is rude to show the bottom of your bottle to someone, so even though I'm hot and thirsty I don't drink from the bottle on the bus.

I take the bus to the end of the line, by the river in Banglamphu, the backpacker side of town. It is 9:30 when I arrive so many of the farang are eating yogurt with muesli, scrambled eggs and toast--things that you just don't find in Salaya. In Salaya for breakfast you eat chicken on rice with a bowl of chicken broth to wash it down. You drink instant coffee or ovaltine. Banglamphu is comforting for the foreigner, myself included. However, instead of eating a $4 Western breakfast, I opt for pad si-iu (commonly known in the U.S. as Pad See-Ew), which I now know translates literally to Fried Soy Bean Sauce. The word "pad" means fried, so Pad Thai--fried Thai. Kao Pad--fried rice. Etc. Pad si-iu comes with egg and veggies, so I get many of the same ingredients of a Western breakfast for less than one dollar.

Americans LOVE to talk about how much things cost. The American professor and I sat during lunch yesterday and chatted for an hour about how much things cost. Why is that so satisfying? It really is, though. "My plane ticket to Japan a few years ago was only $500 round trip," I brag.
He replies "Yeah, I got a one-way ticket from San Francisco to Bangkok for $500 a couple months ago."

Anyway, it's time to sign off. Banglamphu is waiting for me to become disgusted by it yet again, and I may take a boat down the river to go to the big bookstores at Siam Square. I am ravenous for books here, and I consume them at an alarming pace. And since we're on the topic of money, the books are my most expensive indulgence here.