In Transit

Yaooo,
As awesome a time as we were having in Chiang Mai, Jo and I decided yesterday to head for a beach, and quick. We took a train last night(not a sleeper though, bummer) and we arrived in Bangkok a couple of hours ago. I am SO tired right now. Apparently there aren't any trains that run directly to the island of Phuket so we're going to bus it overnight tonight. And as much as we don't want to sleep sitting down two nights in a row, it is much cheaper than flying and I can't wait for tropical islands to snorkel around. Also, Bangkok is an extremely overwhelming place to be if you haven't slept very well or don't like very humid dirty-ish cities. So we're getting the hell out of here.

In other news, Jo and I rented a scooter yesterday for our last day in Chiang Mai and zooted around the moat area of the city and had a lot of precarious fun zipping through Thai traffic. Just in case some of you are not aware, Thai traffic is insane, the only rule is that there are no rules. Jo volunteered to put both of our lives in my hands, I know I wouldn't. Just kidding! It did take some getting used to but I have ridden scooters before and by the end of the day I was taking advantage of being able to do whatever I want; passing anyone not going fast enough as there are no speed limits(within reason), cutting people off without offending anyone, and if for some reason traffic does slow down scooters and motorbikes can just drive between the lanes of cars to the front. I loved it. Although I know that in Canada I would probably be incarcerated within a minute or two. But I was cautious and I wasn't driving like a crazy person, just like a Thai person. We ended up finding this market that isn't meant for tourists but for locals and everything was sooooo cheap. There was also a kind of trendy punkish clothing store where we found some funny copies of brand names and I got a polo that says Trikets instead of Dickies. There were also some national flags there. I should mention that right behind the American flag, there was a nazi swastika flag. We couldn't believe it. I haven't even seen one in a museum let alone held one in my hand. Something like that is so offensive to the west that you just don't see them in North America, aside from a few skinhead gangs(ie: American History X, and if you haven't seen it go rent it now). Of course I got a picture holding both the American and Nazi flag up. But Internet is super slow here so I can't upload it now. But yeah... ummm... that's about it.
I'll post when I'm brown-er and have seen some tropical fish.
Peace,
Ben