Headlines: Farangs Loose in Chinatown!

Life here in Bangkok always seems to be an adventure... or so I choose to look at life here in that perspective. Today after a nice amount of sleeping in my 'housemate' and I decided to venture out and discover (for we had never seen before) the sights of Chinatown.

Our plan was perfect, though somewhat impulsive, we were going to get there by taking the skytrain all the way to Saphan Taskin and then catch the a River Taxi to Rathandonsi (it isn't spelled correctly at all). So... we did it was perfect and then we reached Chinatown. What do we do now that we are here. We actually didn't have any definite plans of what we were in search for or were going to do... so we wandered (oh! Mom, if your reading this I just want you to know that God has been protecting you girl big time here in Bangkok and I have no doubt that he will continue to do so... just in case I'm frightening you with my stories!). Rachel kept telling me, "This isn't what I imagined it would look like! I didn't envision this!" It wasn't bad but our greeting to this foriegn land within a foreign land seemed empty and quiet. There were many shops but their garage doors were shut and no business was happening. That was until we stepped into the sois with many hawkers...

Now being a tourist, being a foreigner (farang as the thai call us) there are certain expectations you setup in your mind, however, it is these very expectations that are so often broken. Our barginers, sellers, hawkers, entrepuner's whatever they are called, were selling everything from animal innards, used watches, car parts, weapons, porn dvds, foriegn fruit (cherries!), assortment of jewlery. It was crowded too! We walked through the throngs in hopes they wouldn't decided that we had money they needed (pickpocketers abound), stepping on one anothers and stranger's feet, nearly being hit in the face by umbrellas... adventure this certainly was!

It wasn't until we stepped onto a main street did we see what we envisioned as Chinatown. On this street scattered with an assortment of vehicles - tuk-tuks, taxis, buses, cars, bikes... the aroma of sizzling flesh of unknown animals, the stench of sewage and pollution... the sight we searched for was finally found, like a buried treasure we had almost given up hope on.

Above our heads, several stories high, were the familiar red with black chinese writing, signs in the sky greeting newcomers to Chinatown. Our stereotype, our vision was really true. About this time is rained, we were getting lost and decided to leave.... where were we? Good question. So we asked the lottery tickect seller, "River?" Eventually, after squabbling with other hawkers we stepped unto a tuk-tuk and returned to our original destination at the dock of the river taxis. For some reason we can't get enough of this place and so our adventure hasn't end... till later!