Ready to go...

Someone once said to me that no matter how long you are in a place, when you know you are going to be leaving, you feel ready to go. I'm ready to go.

I've had a great time in Bangkok. I have mostly been enjoying walking the backstreets and seeing the life that is hidden from most tourists on the main drags. I just love seeing all of the little carts selling all kinds of wonderful food with makeshift restaurants set up with little plastic tables and chairs. I've decided that the main roads are for cars and tourists, the back streets are for people. And since I enjoy seeing Thai people more than tourists and cars, I just love the back streets.

Today I would have been perfectly content to stay in my room, but I had to leave so the maid could do her thing (one of the disadvantages of staying in a hotel, even though clean towels and sheets every day are kind of nice...and wasteful). I walked to Silom Center, again taking the back streets. I stopped and bought some fried bananas.

At Silom Center I was looking for some shirts similar to those I bought when I was here in April 2008. They are very light cotton and have a square bottom, which means they are perfect for really hot weather and don't need to be tucked in. I brought them with me to Korea this past summer and they were great for a situation where I had to kind of dress up and it was incredibly hot.

Only, I guess they were "summer" shirts and unbelievably, they now have sweatshirts and long sleeve shirts on display in the stores now. I mean, it went up to 95 yesterday. It is hardly sweatshirt weather!

From there I walked a little on Silom and stumbled across a Thai Massage place. I think it is called Sabai Thai Massage. They had a Thai massage for 200 baht. I was looking for a way to kill some time before lunch (it was too early) and went in.

The massage was great. I've noticed I moan a lot now when I get massage. It just feels so good because my body is all loose and it doesn't hurt and the stretching just feels good. I wish I could get several massages per day. Well, actually I could. Now the thing is when I get home I need to continue to stretch to build on the flexibility I've attained in this past week.

After my very cheap massage (200 baht = $6.00), I went and had lunch. I went to this little hot pot place that I like. I've been there a few times with Bank. Their soup is very good. But hot pot is not a thing to get alone (at least I don't think it is) so I ordered grilled beef salad and green papaya salad. Now I am thinking that maybe this hot pot place is an I-san restaurant (on the fancy side), since they had several I-san dishes I recognized. I like it better than the Chinese place Bank and I went to the other day.

After lunch, I walked around some more back streets, avoiding eye contact with all of the men who were calling out to me (they all wanted me to go see shows or get massage) until finally a tuk tuk driver pulled up next to me. I don't know why I spoke to him because I should have known what he was up to - no good....

I was not very far from my hotel. I was thinking a nice ride around in a tuk tuk would be fun, but I know that doesn't exist. But when he pulled up next to me and called out to me, I turned to look.

He said something about driving around. I told him no. Then he pulled out a pamphlet and showed it to me. It had a bunch of scantily clad women. I don't know if it was for a massage or a show or what. It turned out that is what he was selling - not a ride in his tuk tuk.

I decided to be bold with him because if I just told him I wasn't interested, he would have persisted.

I said, "I don't like lady", and kept walking.

He was stunned for a moment and said, "what you like?"

I was waiting for him to pull up beside me with a pamphlet with scantily clad men, but instead it took him some time before he finally moved. Maybe he was in shock?

When he did start his tuk tuk he passed by me without another word. It turned out, in this instance, simply stating the fact that I am gay (in a rather roundabout way) was the perfect way to get this tuk tuk driver to back off. Something tells me though, that it probably won't work with all of them.