Stepping off our flight from Saigon to Bangkok, Sarah and I were slapped silly by culture shock. This wasn't culture shock from entering a teeming Asian metropolis, it was the shock of entering a modern, westernized city. Reverse culture shock. It took coming to Thailand for us to realize how undeveloped Vietnam and China were.

After a quick trip through customs, we walked past the Kentucky Fried Chicken in the airport terminal and stopped at an ATM machine. The machine welcomed our card like a long-lost friend, and seconds later we had fistfulls of Baht, the local currency. Then a friendly, smiling information lady pointed us to a friendly, smiling hotel reservation desk, where a friendly, smiling customer service agent secured us a hotel room before pointing us to a friendly, efficient bus into town. Where were all the crowds of people trying to sell us stuff and inflated gringo prices?

We bussed into town. I was shocked to see that traffic generally stopped at red lights and that many of the cars even stayed on the correct side of the road. For that matter, I was shocked just to see cars, so many cars instead of motorbikes. Along the drive we saw office towers and also the neon signage of the West: Pizza Hut, Mister Donut, Starbucks, Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Tower Records, and on every block a 7-11, sometimes two. You can make your own decision as to whether this infestation indicates "progress," but there is no denying we were a long way from China and Vietnam. For 2 months, all the way from Xi'an in northern China to Saigon in southern Vietnam, we hadn't seen a single fast food restaruant or western chain store. I suppose it is a little sad that these sterile, unimaginative chains remind us so much of home, but you'll have to blame Ray Kroch for that one, not me.

Sarah and I spent a few days luxuriating in the western modernity of the place. We gave ourselves a complete break from all things Asia, which in itself was sort of exotic and adventerous. After two months of rice and noodles and stir fry, my BBQ pork sandwich at the Hard Rock Cafe seemed strange and exciting and my grande Frappacinno at Starbucks made my head spin as if I were mainlining caffeine straight through the jugular. "Real" travellers are no doubt reading this with disgust thinking it's softies like me who promote western corporate imperialism. Yep. So what?

Sarah and I continued our romp through mindless unsophisticated western culture by going to a couple of movies. Bangkok has dozens of gorgeous new mutli-plexes that show Hollywood movies in English, not dubbed. The movie theaters all try to out-class each other so they have names like "Bellagio" and interiors of gilded gold. The seats are plush velvet things the size of Lazy Boys. It was worth the $2 admission ticket just to sit in one for a few hours, movie or not. Before every movie you sit through 20 minutes of commercials, and then stand for a video tribute to the King (their King, not Elvis) accompanied by their national anthem. We embarassed ourselves during Charlie's Angles, a movie that we found incrediby funny, because the Thais missed most of the American-specific humor and as a result Sarah and I kept making a lot of noise when the rest of the audience was silent, kind of like a Presbyterian reciting the Lord's Prayer at a Lutheran church.

Our orgy of western living continue for a few days. We shopped at glistening shopping malls. We rinsed our toothbrushes under our water faucet. We ate uncooked vegetables.

Late one night Karna and Mike (Sarah's sister and brother-in-law) showed up for their two week vacation in Thailand. It was nice to see familiar faces after 3 months of being alone, and their arrival helped kick-start us back into tourism mode. We planned to spend two days seeing the sites before heading off to northern Thailand.

We were staying in the southern part of Bangkok and a good way to get across town is to take the water taxi on the Chao Phraya river. Bangkok is a large, traffic-clogged city, but its many canals and rivers continue to be one of the fastest ways to travel. We headed for a pier on the river near the Oriental Hotel. The Oriental frequently tops the list of World's Greatest Hotels, and Sarah and I were interesting in seeing it. A few days before we had tried to enter the lobby, but as we strode confidently up to the door a security guard blocked our way. He gave us a quick look-over, then in his exceedingly (sickeningly) polite way refused to let us in. He claimed there was a dress code prohibiting shorts and he had a sign to prove it, but I saw plenty of silver-haired men in shorts ambling in and out. For whatever reason this really bugged me, so I resolved to return again -- in pants of course -- to stroll pass the security guard with an undeserved sneer on my face.

So here we were, days later, dragging Karna and Mike to see the world's greatest hotel on the way to catching our water taxi. I strutted up to the entrance, sweating like crazy in my long pants, looking sideways to see if the security guard was hiding in the bushes. With some disappointment, he was no where to be seen and we entered without incident. Inside, I was disappointed again. It's not that the Oriental wasn't nice -- actually, it seemed to be quite a classy joint -- it's just that as soon as you start throwing superlatives like "world's greatest" around I sort of expect things like, I don't know, maybe porters riding elephants through the lobby or demure young ladies fanning me with peacock feathers on my walk up to Reception.

But I digress. We hopped onto the water taxi. The attendant tried to charge us 10 Baht instead of 8, and I felt like a pro traveller catching her scam. Reading accounts from other travellers before I left, I had never understood why people got so angry over these little rip-offs. The difference is only 5 cents! You lose more each day in the cushions of your couch! But now that I'm here I myself doing the same thing, getting angry. I guess sub-consciously no one likes getting ripped off.

The water taxi was large, more like a "water bus," and the ride north took about 20 minutes. We stopped frequently at piers to let people on and off, though we never docked. The captain just eased the butt of the boat up next to the pier and people lept across the gap. Clearly, Thailand is a country lacking in personal injury lawyers.

We disembarked at the pier near our first destination, The Grand Palace. As soon as we got off, a crowd of tuk-tuk drivers (small 3 wheeled motorcycle taxis) mobbed around us and told us it was closed today for a National Holiday. They said it would open at 1:00 and they would be happy to take us on a half-day tour of Bangkok and return to drop us off here at opening time. We passed on their offer and headed instead to Wat Pho, a nearby temple that was also on our "must see" list.

Thai wats, and there are lots of them, are the most richly decorated buildings you can imagine. The outsides are adorned with gilded gold and deep red and are inlaid with glass and mosiacs of pottery and china shards. Each wat has many buildings, both big and small. Buddhas and stuppas dot the courtyards, and large gold Buddhas sit in each of the major worship halls. These characteristics are shared by all Thai wats, but what sets this one apart is its immense "Reclining Buddha." We had heard a lot about the giganticness of this Buddha and when we actually saw it it was pretty much what we expected. It was big. It was reclining. It was a Buddha. To be fair, I should qualify that "big." It was really big. 46 meters long to be exact. Three-quarters of a football field of gold Buddha.

In one of those strange juxtapositions that makes travel in Asia so surreal, our visit to the wat was punctuated by the appearance of a genuine, American-style marching band. The band members were all Thai and looked to be high-school age. They were in full marching-band attire: blue and white uniforms, spats, and those wierd hats. At the front of the pack was a high-stepping drum major pumping a shiny metal drum-major pole, and the rest of the band followed two by two with their flutes and trumpets and drums and tubas. The band marched and played for 20 or 30 minutes, ducking in and out of the courtyards, dodging Buddhas.

The real star of Wat Pho, though, was yet to come. Near the back of the compound, over on the side, were two small buildings with crowds of people milling about. For some reason, Wat Pho has become the leading center of traditional Thai massage, and here in these buildings you could get a full massage from a master masseuse for about $5. Sarah, Karna, and I paid our fee and lined up with everyone else.

I don't really know what I was expecting from a Thai massage, but I didn't expect what I got. It wasn't so much a rubbing as a pushing. A forced yoga. They grab your arms and legs and twist you into a whole series of improbable positions. These maneuvers are interspersed with accu-pressure like things, where the masseuse pushes on specific areas using various parts of her body. Feet, elbows, forearms are frequently called into action. Sarah, Karna, and I agreed that our favorite part was a move where the masseuse hooked the toes of one foot around our shins and then used her other foot to massage the calf.

After our massages, we struck back out into the hot sun, heading for the Grand Palace. I was wonderfully limber. Almost floppy. We were assulated once again by tuk-tuk drivers, whose story had now changed. Now they said the Palace wouldn't open until 2:00, but that they would be happy to take us on a one hour tour of the area and then drop us off in time for opening. We ingored their pestering and walked up to the entrance, where we discovered that not only was the Grand Palace open, but it had been open all day.

The Grand Palace was neat, though it was sort of an assualt on the senses. It was almost too big and brilliant. The palace included a tmple complex as well as 4 or 5 separate residential palaces. All were richly deocorated. Colorful. Sparkling. It was a wierd amalgam of architecture, not just Thai, Khmer, Hindu, and Buddhist, but also European. Various kings and emporers have been adding buildings for hundreds of years, and you can see the influence of foriegn cultures sketched out in the building styles. In fact, the Grand Palace got to chalk-full of buildings that the last King, King Rama-the-something-or-other, moved out about 40 years ago and now lives in a new royal residence about 5 KM to the east.

Riding back to our hotel in the taxi, I was a little nervous. Bankok's nightlife has a rather infamous reputation and unknowngly I had booked a hotel just 2 block from Patpong, the heart of the red light district. When Sarah and I had checked in the day before the area looked harmless enough, but now that darkness was falling I didn't know what to expect. With any luck, I hoped we could avoid having Sarah and Karna kidnapped by Russian mafia and sold into the seedy backalleys of Bankok's sex industry.

I was suprised, then, to discover that Patpong at night has more in common with the Olmstead County Fair than it does with a den of unbiblical fornication. The streets had been transformed into a maze of booths selling food and also selling every imaginable form of conterfeit merchandise. Polo shirts, Prada handbags, Rolex watches, North Face backpacks, Nike Tennis shoes. With a little bargaining, anything could be had for a very reasonable price. The go-go bars lined the sides of the street, but we just caught brief glimpses of their doorways through the thick walls of t-shirts, watches, and purses. It wasn't until we took a side-street that we saw more evidence of the "sailor's" Bangkok. On this street we saw clusters of bored looking women sitting outside the various clubs. The women had thick makeup on and wore long evening gowns that looked like bridesmaid dresses. Each woman also had a number pinned to her dress. I guess the idea was to go inside and order your woman by the number, as you would a McDonald's Happy Meal.

Sarah and I have already been to Bangkok twice on this trip, and we will be here two more times before flying off the Australia in about a month. This town isn't the hellhole I'd been led to believe it would be, and I don't dread coming back here as so many travellers do. We will eat some pizza, see a movie, chomp a few donuts. It's our own little slice of America. Bangkok, USA set smack dab in the middle of Southeast Asia.