The Tiring of Ko San Rd

February 09 2010
our train is a 12 hour long ride. thank god the majority of it is through the night, but like a bunch of babies, we are really excited to be able to poop, bathe, and nap today... back to bangkok.

like previously stated, there is something uncanny about how things dont always move on time here for the general public. we got to our hotel at 10am, and found that it would take from 10am till 2pm for someone to come and "clean" our room. we were dumbstruck and irritated to say the least. i, at least, was crawling out of my skin having not had decent sleep in the past 11 hours and having two days worth of day and night sweat covering me, the smell of fading deodorant with new B.O. and grime clinging to my clothing is enough to make me gag. Yes. it gets that bad.at 11am in the morning we had thai pizza and a walk through ko san road, which happens to be the most americanized road in all of bangkok. let me explain to you the idoicy. the road is primarily white tourists, and it breathes kerouac influenced middle aged and youths looking for alternativisms and besting all the rest at bohemisnism. the only thais who wander the street are vendors, and often they are just as dolled up to match the hippied tourists wandering around. you can get fake hair installed in your head, get your hair knotted into dreadlocks or braids, you can have pints of beer or even mini kegs if you are a group, you can get bamboo tattoos, you can get junkjunkjunk and more junk, you can use atms, go to the local starbucks or kfc, and buy a variety or more useless crap. in the evenings there is vendors who looked like they were in their own celebratory world dancing close to their boomboxes and selling silly glow in the dark and flashlight junk. the trannies also come out, and they DO get service. and its really just a bunch of people looking to party and get drunk in the streets of bangkok with people who look just like them with the same intentions...

now, what we were doing wandering this idoit of a road was trying to find a bookstore where we might be able to exchange or sell our current novels for other ones. what is sickening is how arrogant some of these book vendors are. brittney had bought "water for elephants" for 350baht, a little over 10$, and when trying to sell it in really very nice condition, the highest number that she got from a buyer was 100baht, which is about 3$!! it just makes us so sad. we're used to other readers who read and defend their love for books with a vengence...and it just seems like these vendors of english novels just dont care and want to make the highest buck they can (which, everyone does in the world) with an attitude like we just pooped in their bookstore and are asking for something significant from them.
needless to say we resent that particular road and avoid it unless we need to find a bookstore with a decent english section.
then we ate at a restaurant we frequent when in bangkok, shoshana's middle eastern. yumyum food, with equally as yumyum middle eastern male customers!