Thailand is delicious!

Playing speed Scrabble in Manila.
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We're finally here in Bangkok.  It's now our first morning.  The past X number of hours have been pretty crazy... so crazy that I can't even figure out exactly how many hours have passed.

I think Brian and Jenni and Mark and I are pairs of twins.  Jenni and I both brought the same book to read on the plane - Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver.  And Brian and Mark both brought camera manuals to read.  Our twinhood also came in handy later in the trip, see below.  We had a long 5 hour layover in Manila - we ate mangos that came from the Phillipines via California and played speed Scrabble and Hearts.

It wasn't bad... the maggots tasted like ro4 song1, the dried pork shredded thing that you can eat with rice porridge.

This is to document that we really did find the wat where we were supposed to meet Brian and Jenni. We missed each other by minutes!
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B+J and M and I are staying in different hotels.  So after our taxi dropped us off at our respective accomodations, we agreed to meet at this temple that was somewhere around the mid-point between our hotels.  As you might imagine, this resulted in quite a silly mixup, involving several tuk tuk drivers and some person named Chai from Chiang Mai.  M and I had trouble finding the temple (Wat) and B+J wound up leaving before we found the Wat.  You had to get through this maze of side streets.  B+J found the temple before we did, but apparently left right before we got there.  We each separately ran into a bunch of people, got travel recommendations from these people, and we each mentioned that we were looking for our friends.  We met a lot of the same people - someone told B+J that they had met "the Chinese girl who lives in America" (that's me) and that we were looking for them.  We encountered all the same people and were in the same area, but we couldn't come together in one place.  So here's where being of similar minds comes in to play - we both figured to go back to our hotel (M+R's) and we eventually met up.  That's pretty talented.  No cell phones, we didn't have to resort to using the internet (yet), and Bangkok is a crazy place - and despite all this mess, we were clever enough to find each other.  I saw this on a TV show once where people had figure out how to meet up with other people by guessing what the other people would do.  We'd be champions of that show.  Except maybe our inability to find wats, even really large ones, would put us at a disadvantage.

After we found each other again, we took a photo of B J so that we can use it to show other people if we ever lose each other again.
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Food - I've been having so much fun with the food.  I had delicious pinapple.  This fried omelette thing.  J had a delicious green curry and B had tom yum kaeng noodles.  Kaeng is curry.  The curry sauce was so good that we were debating whether to suck it up through a straw.  It would have been very tasty, but I'm not strong enough to handle such spicy foods yet.

After this delicious dinner, eaten at a street-side stand, we set off to find dessert.  We found this cart making banana roti - it was heavenly.  I saw a bunch of similar carts on the touristy street, but this cart that we went to was at a whole higher level.  After we finished the roti, we turned around to discover that the cart had disappeared.  We think that we were lucky enough to stumble upon a fairy banana roti cart where the banana roti is especially delicious.  I hope we find it again.

The selection of delectable insects. We ate the ones in top row, second from the left.
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And Mark wanted to try some bugs, so he bought a bag of maggoty things.  I tried one, but I had to do it quickly so that I couldn't think too much about what I was eating.  It wasn't bad... the maggots tasted like ro4 song1, the dried pork shredded thing that you can eat with rice porridge.  That's checked off the list and things can only get less gross from there!

This morning, we got up ridiculously early and we set off to find some food.  We found this alleyway where we were the only tourists there.  We had chicken with cashews and another omelette, this time with crab meat!  A roi!  Delicious!  I think I'm going to like this eating thing.

Roti fairies
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Next up... I haven't had any noodles yet!

Mosquito update:  I killed one on the plane during our refueling stop in Guam.  After I saw the mosquito, I felt itchy all over, but I don't think I actually got nay bites.  So far in Bangkok, things are okay.  I thought I saw one in the room right before we went to sleep, but I don't think I was bitten.  I have discovered that my face and neck skin is very sensitive to mosquito repellant - We have some DEET-based stuff and some lemon-eucalyptus "natural" stuff and both made my skin feel like it was burning.  If real non-poser and not-so-easily-killed mosquitoes show up, I don't know what I'll do.

Our first "breakfast." Chicken and cashews. Crab omelette. A roi!
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Skeeter Meter:  still at 0!  For everyone!