November 13, 2003

We arrived in Bangkok from Hong Kong this past Monday afternoon. After renting a car from Budget near the airport, it took us literally 4 hours to get out of the city. Four hours! This delay was most likely due to bad directions, learning how to drive on the left side of the road, terrible traffic with crazy drivers and even nuttier motorcyclists, and getting used to strange u-turn sections of the highways with most signs exclusively in Thai. In the midst of our confusion, we got pulled over by a cop for who knows what reason. He waved us over to him and when we did, he confiscated my dads license and said that we needed to go to the police station down the road. We kept asking him what we did wrong, but he either didnt understand what we were saying or chose not to. At any rate, we eventually got from him that we needed to pay a 400 baht fine at the station. Instead, we suggested that we pay him the fine and he could carry it over to the station for us. This, apparently, suited him just fine. He took the money, hit it quickly under his clipboard, and most likely used it to buy his family a fancy dinner that evening. The whole time I sat in the car thinking I cant believe this cop is just taking a bribe, just like that. Seems so unethical. I suppose I have to get used to it.

Nearly 6 hours after arriving in Bangkok, we arrived at a town called Nathon Prakon, where we spent the night and took a day trip to the floating market nearby the next morning. Nathon Prakon is home to the worlds tallest Buddhist stupa, and there happened to be a huge night festival going on when we arrived, probably to raise money for the temple. We drove all around the city and couldnt find a placeto stay until we finally did at about 11PM. This place cost all of 250 baht (about 6 dollars) for all four of us and had a fan that actually worked. What we didnt get in cleanliness or quality, we got in location- we were about 100 meters from the temple and could hear the festivities going on until the wee hours of the next morning.