Bangkok is big, very big. It has a decent high tech mass transit system, but it still takes 30-60 minutes to get where you’re going. If you’re not on the BTS (in the air) or the MRT (underground) you’re sitting in traffic for a long while. We only planned a short time here in order to spend more in the countryside and up North, but it leaves us struggling to know where to start. 
In pursuit of a well known vegetarian restaurant (unexpectedly closed for the day) we, inadvertently, end up in the Khao San Road area. This is the loud and bright backpacker entertainment zone, though there are plenty of older ex-pats here also. In fact, its distinguishing characteristic is that the customers are mostly “farang“ I.e. foreigners. If you’re looking for fried scorpions, a public group foot massage or a medium sized balloon containing laughing gas, this is the place for you. At the east end of the street, the clientele are very young and the live music from the not very good bands overlaps in a outdoor cacophony, while at the other end near the river old ex-pat couples veg out in bars where all the seats face directly onto the street in order to facilitate people watching. The vibe is not what we were looking for that day and this is confirmed when we have a run-in with a sociopathic British bar manager who threatens physical violence when I complain that my Mai Tai is, actually, just grenadine, ice and water. Let’s see what tomorrow will bring.
As it turns out, tomorrow is better and we spend the morning at Wat (Temple) Pho, after a nicely dressed gentleman tried to persuade us that the temple was, in fact, closed for lunch and that we should head to these other establishments he had in mind, before heading cross-town for our previously arranged Thai cooking class. Pimmy, is the sole female owner and she has a good set-up with an air-con classroom and dining area, a semi-outdoor kitchen and, close by, a fresh market, We get to prepare a Panang curry, green papaya salad, a spicy prawn dish and sweet mango and sticky rice. 
There is much pounding with a mortar and pestle, a real eye opener for someone used to opening a can or bottle of Thai red/ green curry paste. Luckily, there’s an extremely local shop of sorts next door where we can buy large bottles of Chang beer to cool us down. It all turns out very well, though some of the pungent flavors are not for everyone in the class who were, aside from us, all 20 something multi-cultural Australians from Sydney.
The other issues in Bangkok are the heat, as it is one of the consistently hottest cities on the planet, the air quality and the constant hustle routines from folks trying to make a buck from the tourists. To be fair, we haven’t seen much blue sky since we left Singapore and the default sky has been a hazy grey, not sure how much of it is moisture, smog or smoke from seasonal field burning, but it’s not healthy. Regarding the hustling it’s not that it’s that bad, but that it’s a total contrast from Vietnam where nobody bothered us about anything! In fact, we’d look at the tour office and booths there, where the sole employee would be hypnotized by their phone, and wonder how they made any money at all. From one extreme to the other.
With a morning departure by train coming up, we pass on exploring Bangkok’s infamous nightlife zones and stay locally in the North of town, but do come across “Bottle Rocket” a craft beer bar with a serious collection of draft and bottled beer, including a couple from Oregon. 
After a couple of weeks of Tiger/Saigon/333/Singha /Chang/Leo beer you definitely appreciate something with more flavor. We regale the young owners with legends of the artisanal beer palaces of Portland and they seem to fall for it.
Each of the countries we’ve visited so far has had a different political flavor: Singapore’s upmarket consumer benevolent dictatorship, Vietnam’s old school communist on paper, but do whatever the heck you want in practice, and now Thailand’s military junta with a smile, overlaid with a Royalist fetish that just won’t let up. 
There are enormous Royal portraits everywhere and this full-on cult of personality gets unsettling after a while. Bearing this in mind, we’re careful not to bring this subject up with locals as it can, literally, result in your arrest and incarceration if your comments are interpreted negatively.
Sorry for whining about Bangkok, it’s enormous and surprisingly modern and I’m sure there are endless things to do and see but we were unprepared for it and didn’t budget enough time to do it justice.
We’re heading to Khao Yai National Park next and we’re going to use Thailand’s much berated National Railway system. There are rumors of delays and mismanagement but we wanted to avoid the buses, so let’s see how we do.
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