tasha - now why would we pay to watch cats play ping pong.

ahhhhhhh bangkok. yesterday shea and i hit the grand palace and wat po, to see the good ol' reclining buddah. he looked better than last time i was there, and the place was virtually deserted for some reason (maybe lots of people believed the scammers that told you it was closed, and offered to take you to "lucky temple" instead...i fell for that last time with some brits and we ended up getting ditched at a silk shop). after we took a different road back and stumbled upon this incredible little market, an actual thai market, so we wandered through, bought some persimmons and our first street meat - but it wasn't actually meat. we weren't sure what it was actually but i'm pretty sure it was a spicy bean cake. it was damn tasty, i can tell you that. but one of the weirdest things we saw were tons and tons of dentures. obviously someone's dentures who had died, then they were being re-sold at the market. i guess if you're broke and have no teeth someone else's teeth is better than no teeth, but either way, gross.

after that we went back to our guest house bar and proceeded to get fairly drunk off of chang beer. this guy on the plane told me he heard chang has tons of formeldahyde to speed up the brewing process, and based on my hangover today, i'd say something is amiss. but anyway, we went down to khoa san road, met some hilarious brits (aren't they all hilarious?), had some yummy spicy dinner, got offered lots of shows that included women, ping pong balls...you figure it out. all you heard walking down the street was "pussy ping pong? pussy ping pong?" we passed. ewwwwwww. we did come down another street, raa---somethingorather (i'm hungover. brain not functioning) and it was far more awesome than khoa san road. i wish we'd had dinner there. but, it was good times, we DID eat deep fried grubs. yes we did. i have the video to prove it, i'll upload it as soon as i can. they were actually good, if you didn't think about what you were eating. shea really liked them, she ate most of them.

so, i'm waiting for shea (every time i write that, you have to have a drink) and we're going to take the night train tonight to chaing mai, spend a couple of days then head to laos. i'll keep you posted.

oh yeah - and tonight? headed to patpong. perhaps we'll see some ping pong.