Culture

I am incredibly tired today because that damn rooster wouldn't shut up and woke me up extremely early so I apologize if this post doesn't make a whole lot of sense:
Well we went to the embassy yesterday and they basically told me to do some border hopping in order to renew my visa but I will keep you informed. We spent the rest of the day in Bangkok and had a blast. We visited some emaculate temples which I do have pictures for and will attempt to get those posted. We also went to Chinatown and that was pretty interesting...very dirty and very crowded but it really looked like a scene right out of a movie. Everyone is very friendly but we noticed that they all have the same line "I go to USA next week" then comes the helpful directions to a store that they get commission for if they bring customers. We took a taxi from the embassy to china town for about 50 baht (little less then 2 dollars). Then we basically took a 2 hour tour on a tuk-tuk to 3 different temples and ending at Kosahn road total price was 30 baht. But we had to go fake interest in two shops that he gets commission for...we thought it was an even trade.
Kosahn road is a HUGE toursit street and basically you have a bunch of bars, hostels, and street venders. We got off of the tuk-tuk and within 4 seconds we had someone asking us if we wanted to see the ping-pong show...use your imagination. Throughout the few hours we were there we probably got asked about the ping-pong show 10 times. Brooke decided to go get a massage so inevitably Matt and I sat at a bar and people watched. With everything from Europeans to Indians, dirtballs to children it was pretty interesting. Then Matt overheard the guy at the table next to us bartering for the price of one of our waitresses it was very disturbing.
The pollution is pretty horrific in Bangkok and I don't think I could ever live there. We all felt pretty light headed at the end of it, I think we will be investing in hankerchiefs or something by the end of the day today. Another thing we noticed is that everybody drinks out of straws around here. We sometime wonder if we are being rude taking giant swigs of our water but nobody pays much attention to the farangs from Nebraska.
Matt was the first one to fall...he couldn'g get off the pot two days ago due to an interesting meal the supervisor of his program gave him while he was at the hospital doing his check-up (for insurance). So that was kind of a lost day for him, the nice thing was that we got to have pizza because of it. The pizza was delicious and we decided that if anyone gets sick that's when we can have pizza, a little taste of home.
There are packs of wild dogs around everywhere and they also have a lot of dogs as pets so their dynamic is pretty interesting. I will do my best to convince them to have a "talk" with my rooster so I can finally get some sleep but we will see how that goes.
Besides that we are just adjusting to life as it pertains to the dream, I will keep you guys updated and try and get some pictures posted soon.

Here's to you,
Ryan Michaud