Let me do a little Bangkok wrap-up for ya…
…but first, you have to know something: my mom is listening. “Huh?” you say. That’s right. “But your mom doesn’t have a NV account.” Right again. “Wait, does that mean that…..” It does indeed. I’ve taken this baby to the street. From now on, you can read this [still poorly formatted…. for now] blog at http://www.si-si-ay.blogspot.com. All the archives are up, and it gets updated when the NV version does. Just for my mom. And maybe yours (although why you would do that to your mom is just beyond me. Doesn’t she have enough going on already???).

So Bangkok was a lot lot lot of fun. Although I went there alone, I didn’t do any of the things that single men typically go to Bangkok alone to do. This prompted Vlad to (quite rightly) ask “so why the hell did you go to Bangkok alone?”. Fair enough. I just wanted a lively city, that was close and doable, and it seemed to fit the bill.

A brief word about the whole sex tourism thing: it’s become such a cliché, you can’t help but think about it…. all the time. It’s strange. You (or I) become sort of uncomfortable looking at or talking to women, because you think you reek of predation. It’s sort of like how I first responded to the m/f ratio at INSEAD. It became such a charged issue, that I felt that just saying “hi” to a girl would be received as “why don’t you lift your skirt up and bend over.” Anyway, whatever thoughts one might have about sampling any Thai female delicacies can be eliminated, I think, by just looking at the all the fat, sad old white guys leading their mute, petite little playthings through the city, thinking that they can impress them by which restaurant they take them to or what drinks they buy. Thinking that they can be impressed, or that it matters at all. Maybe I’m going overboard, and shouldn’t generalize so much. All I mean to say is that it took away my appetite on this particular occasion.

A BIG thank you to Brendan for his hotel recommendation, which I now pass on to you (NB: without taking credit for it). The Davis. It’s a silly nice boutique hotel in the Sukumvit area. It’s not right by the Sky Train, but they run a regular free shuttle via tuk tuk (those kick-ass little motorcycle cars a la Indian rickshaw). As I mentioned they were out of rooms for Saturday, so I booked a suite on Saturday, and a regular room (for half the price) on Sunday. I use ratestogo.com for last minute hotels-it was the only site that allowed me to book that hotel same day, and they gave about 60% rack rate. Anyway, the suite was so pimp I can’t even tell you. The shower stall was like half a cubicle. I’ll post pics (just to be super tacky). Anyway, Sunday, I was so smitten with it, I called up to ask if I could keep it at the same price. They said no, but I could keep it at the rate of the room I had booked for the night. Ummmmm…..thank you.

As for the city, I went to the weekend market, which was overwhelming, but cool. I particularly enjoyed the guy selling friend bugs and scorpions from a cart. Walked around the Nana area, which was interesting…there was a nice Shishah/restaurant that had the most slamming chrome/b&w art deco façade, further blinged out with rows and rows of shiny hookahs…I couldn’t resist. I also bowed to the tailor temptation, but didn’t go the suit route, rather had my favorite jeans (which are a pretty unusual cut) copied in denim, some linens, and seersucker (and I had striped shirting cotton pocket lining put in those…looking forward to see how they turn out)…given that I have only 5 t-shirts, 2 bathing suits, 2 pairs of shorts and those jeans, they’ll come in handy. Still no word on the items shipped from FBL that were supposed to be here last week.

Well, that’s enough for now. Let me work on getting pics up, and we’ll do part 2 later.