Feeling @ home in China Town

The airplane took off, nobody sitting next to me, great 3 seats for myself. This thought only lasted for maybe 5 minutes. 2 Danish guys approached me with a very sad face. They where sitting next to a guy who didn’t stop with sneezing and making other funny noises, so they asked me if they could sit next to me. I felt compassion for them cause I’m familiar with those things especially the funny noises (I’m still not used to that, even after spending a year in China), so I decided to let them sit next to me. They appeared to be musicians that where going to travel around Thailand for a couple of weeks. After talking for a while the well-known sentence of the flight attendant was asked: chicken or beef? I Couldn’t finish my plate so the Danish guys asked me if they could have it. I was surprised, but agreed. After a few seconds I realized that I put my toothpick in the rice. I was a bit bored before so just put the stick in the rice. The question now was, what am I going to do, tell them or let them discover it themselves with the risk that they choke in it. The rice was standing close to me so I tried to get the stick out without them noticing it, but every time they looked so I had to pull back my hand. I was feeling like Mr. Bean at that time, so clumsy. Ok, I had to tell them. They didn’t understand that I put the stick in there, so they thanked me for warning them and saving their lives. That was mainly because they were already to drunk to understand I think. Afterwards we discovered that the meal also came with a fortune cookie, Jacob the guy next to me had a cookie with the following text: ‘Be careful with what you eat’. Who didn’t believe in fortune cookies?
Bangkok finally after almost 11 hours. Immediately got introduced to the Thai life. Starting with Pat Pong of course, the most famous bar street of Bangkok. Why it is so famous? I heard something about ping-pong shows or something :P (people who’ve been in Bangkok know what I mean, for the others look it up on the Internet).
Today, time to discover Bangkok downtown. Quite a long way from the area where I stay. First I have to go with the taxi, then take the skytrain and the last part with a boat over the Chao Phraya River. Finally, reached the destination: China Town. Walking around that area I was feeling at home, made me think about the good times in Beijing although many people here already live here for such a long time that they don’t even speak Chinese anymore. Many different stalls with almost everything that you can imagine. Hundreds of smells are reaching your nose, one better than the other of course. There are not only hundreds of smells but also hundreds of people. Good thing that I am quite tall compared to the others so I have the ability to grasp some air once in a while. Quite necessary because it is very hot and humid, right sticky weather.
Back to the boat off to the next stop: the Grand Palace, that was the plan at least. Found a nice bench in the shade so decided to sit down for a while and have something to drink. Bad idea, sitting there for 10 seconds and people tried to sell corn to feed the pigeons. Took me a while before I convinced them that I really wasn’t interested. Finally they left, 10 seconds later another guy. I still don’t know what he wanted but he told me about all kinds of interesting places to see. He took off and number 3 was already waiting, a tuk-tuk (kind of 3-wheeler) driver. Wanted to take me around and show me some Buddha’s and temples for only 30 Baht (about 60 euro cent) for 2 hours. Decided to do that since sitting on the bench didn’t work out the way I’d planned. And off we go from temple to temple and from Buddha to Buddha. Quite interesting because the temples are very different from the ones in China and Taiwan. Halfway the dark skies were getting closer and closer. Standing in front of an enormous standing Buddha, there it was. Completely wet within 30 seconds. The streets changed into rivers within minutes.
Now sitting in my room in the dark. Lightning struck so the power is off. Long live the laptop batteries.