I've had enough of these early mornings, 05:15 is not a valid time to wake up, at least this is the last one. The train was half an hour late getting to the station and we were half an hour early getting there, I don't like the way the math works out. I ended up having plenty of time to stare at all the people.
I've gotten to where I can almost tell where most people are from before I hear them talk. The Japanese are pretty easy to spot, I guess I'm probably mixing the Koreans in with them I've read that it's pretty much impossible to tell them a apart physically. The Americans are too easy they're the ones that with the white shoes and their shirt tucked into their pants, and they talk really loud. The Germans you really have to spot by their glasses, they just look European. The only Chinese I've seen have been 60+ year old ladies. I the Israelis like it here too, they're pretty tough to spot you've got to wait for them to start speaking.
Don't let me forget the back pack people, they've got these humongous fully loaded expedition packs on their back and a full daypack on their chest. I kept meaning to stop one and ask what kind of crap they had in there. It's got to be too much of something, I've got three changes of clothes a laptop camera and accessories (including a 2 kg power converter) and I've gotten in all in a big daypack. It weighs way too much but compared to them I'm traveling light.
On the train down to Pattaya I slept almost the whole way, each time I woke up there were more and more 18-25 year old Japanese guys on the train around us. I'm not sure what it means.
Pattaya falls in the same category as most of India, a place I'm glad I've been because now I know I'll never go back. It was hot, there were way to many fat hairy white people with too few clothes on and all the prostitutes intimidate me, they're very aggressive. I don't know what the deal is but I guess you can get a girl for the whole day or something because there were way to many fat old white guys walking around with Thai girls.
The bus back was definitely they way to go, it was air conditioned, just 90 baht (~$2.50) and only took two hours as opposed to fucking hot, 36 baht and 4 hours.
We got dropped off next to a place called MK Restaurant. We had no idea what they served there but there were a ton of locals waiting out front so we figured it couldn't be too bad. Some one had a solid idea with this place, you pick out your ingredients, and vegetables, meat, noodles and then you cook them in an electric stove thing on your table. It took us a while to figure it out since only 1/3 of the menu was in English and only one person out of the 30 or so there working spoke it. She helped us find something that was vegetarian, and even showed us how to cook it. Apparently they're really popular here and they're opening one in California soon.
On to the airport by 21:00 for a flight that leaves at 01:00, I guess it's good that I get time to catch up on this journal but does anyone else see the pattern here.
Posted by drewish at February 13, 2001 10:24 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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