After 13 days of exploring the Southern peninsula and several islands of Thailand's West Coast, we arrived by overnight train in the traffic choked, overcrowded, smoggy city of Bangkok. Known as Krung Thep to the locals, Bangkok is home to 7 million of the 63 million
souls calling Thailand home. (11% of the countries population for those of you without a calculator). We quickly attended to our main reason to stay in Bangkok, obtaining visas into Viet Nam and Cambodia.

We visited the backpackers' mecca known as Khao San Road to sample the fabled Thailand backpackers circuit. They have it all here. Knock off Rolex's, Brietling, TAG Heure watches for US$35. Knock off North Face, Timberland and Nike packs less than US$25. The endless supply of tee shirts that you would never be able to find in the overly litigious US line the narrow shops crammed together along the wide street and sell for US$1.50 each. We even found the elusive Fat Albert, "Hey hey hey" and Mr. T "I ain't getting on no plane fool" tee shirts. Newly released movies on DVDs not yet out on DVD in the US sell for 3 for US$10 and music CD's for $2.40 each. Of course we wouldn't buy any of these pirated versions having lived a vicarious lesson through our good friend J "Hey hey hey" S. We are completely happy lining the pockets of the recording industry executives by shelling out 12-18 clams for a CD and 15 for a DVD. Piracy is openly acknowledged as a problem here in Asia and Bangkok seems to be the clearing house. You can find just about any name brand here; Gucci, Diesel, Polo, Nautica, Rolex, Paul Frank, Nike, Adidas, Timberland, etc. Of course they are all counterfeit copies and dirt-cheap. The difference in quality is hard to detect and unless your into threadcounts or are a Swiss watchmaker it is difficult to tell a real from a fake, except for the bulge that remains in your wallet. Empty handed, of course, after several hours we fled to the quiet solitude of our room in a hotel closer to the embassies to decompress from sensory overload.

After a few days, we were done with Bangkok. We did manage to squeeze in a visit to the famous reclining Buddha and the not so clean Wat Pho surrounding it. Buddha's got some big feet. The Grand Royal Palace was much more impressive. We spent a few hours in awe of the mythical Thai characters inspired by the ancient Hindu story of Ramayana: The epic adventures of Prince Rama who solicits the help of Hanuman, the monkey warrior, to rescue princess Sita who has been kidnapped by the demon king Ravana. The painted battle scenes in which Rama and the monkeys are ultimately victorious line the palace and the colors and characters are awe-inspiring. The murals covering the walls record snapshots of a single moment of epic battle scenes. Chariots filled with monkey warriors pulled by lions pitched in battle against massive numbers of four-armed demon archers riding elephants and chariots. On the river scenes ornate barges pulled by serpents filled with the four-armed demon archers in battle with monkey warriors riding giant serpents. The murals are so vivid and intricate freezing the action in every warrior's strained muscles and facial expression. We left believing there was such a magical period of time filled with such creatures.....…..

Although there are many hidden gems in Bangkok, it's a bit sad to see the very unique Thai culture being swallowed up by westernization and modernization as showcased in Bangkok. Ornate temples with complex organic lines built in the 18th and 19th centuries surrounded by filth, construction, and smog choked traffic. In spite of this, the Thai people remain themselves seem very happy and always seem to have a smile to share with you. In this land of rigid social controls where possession of heroin in any amount leads to life imprisonment and possession with intent to sell garners the death penalty, we really sensed the slow death of a culture in Bangkok and were left a bit ashamed of what our "Western" ways have done to the culture that opened its arms to us.

The Thai people hold their king in the highest regard and his face adorns billboards and banners all around Bangkok. He holds a demi-god status amongst the population. One interesting fact we learned is that the musical "The King and I" was and still is officially banned in Thailand due to "historical and cultural distortions" over the accounts of Anna Leonowens life in Thailand. In the 1956 musical she is portrayed as the governess to the children of King Rama IV and by her own account said that she played an important part in the affairs of state. The Thais claim that, in reality, she was employed as a school teacher to the Royal children and rarely had an audience with the King, let alone danced with him. The 1998 remake of the musical in the film Anna and the King (a great movie) starring Jodie Foster and Chow Yun Fat is also banned in Thailand and you don't see pirated copies of it laying around the market stalls. A tuk-tuk driver we talked to said that the movie made the king seem silly. And to the Thai people the king, the longest standing monarch in the world, is anything but silly. The King is truly a benevolent leader and the Thai people worship him almost as devoutly as they do Buddha. He is a national treasure.

The minute you stop to take a breath in Bangkok the city rolls over you like a massive steamroller. A bit overwhelmed with the throbbing energy of Bangkok in general, we threw the tea leaves and carefully read our future which beckoned us to a nearby land shrouded in a fog of mystique and controversy, a land where few tourists venture, the golden land of Buddha, otherwise known as Burma, (or Myanmar as the ruling military would like the world to know them). We were intrigued by the controversy over the Burmese government opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's efforts to discourage visits to Burma as a tourist destination for fear that foreign currency would help support the Machiavellian military regime. The old reverse psychology ploy of wanting what you can't have was gnawing at us at every conversation of our next destination. We had come so far and were too close to resist the temptation. The hook was set. We opted for an attempt to be responsible tourists in Burma, avoiding government transportation and hotels in favor of locally owned guesthouses, restaurants and teahouses. We wanted to learn more and understand the tragedy of this nation. We paid the extra fee for a visa service in Bangkok for Visas and forked out the clams for the one-hour flight to Rangoon.

Before leaving we learned from the local newspapers of a development in Cambodia, where we would be traveling on Feb 18. Apparently a Thai soap opera actress had made some comments about how the Angkor ruins, a Cambodian national treasure, should be returned to Thailand. Young crazed soap opera fans disillusioned by their role model's comments were angered and a riot ensued outside the Thai embassy in Cambodia's capital city Phnom Penh. The embassy was destroyed by fire and looting and the Cambodian government was ill prepared to cope with it. I am not kidding. This really happened. Soap opera fans sack embassy! Link to news story. Thailand responded by closing its borders to Cambodia, cutting off diplomatic relations, expelling diplomats and canceling all flights from Thailand to Cambodia. Link to follow up story In disbelief, I dismissed this potential complication to our travel plans believing that the situation would play itself out by the time we had planned to travel to Cambodia on Feb 18th.

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