Khaosan Road, Bangkok

Whoa, we aren't in Kansas anymore.  We're in tourist central of a mega city of 12mm people.

Within 10 meters of our hotel is a Thai dude doing a Sweet Home Alabama cover which is competing by volume with 4 other establishments, the most amped up playing that "let's get it started" song like from the La Ruta start.  There's 5 tatoo parlors (kid you not), a few doing henna, some guy blowing off fireworks to scare passers by, no shortage of massage places, junky jewelers, pirated CD/DVD sellers, tailors (I'm guessing the ones on this block aren't where my Thai equivalent investment bankers get their suits made) junk sellers of all sorts including 1 foot lighters which is way too much flame for here, tacky t-shirts of all sorts, and there's like lots of stuff on show, presumably both male and female in miniskirts.  This street is maybe 5 blocks long, and the template of services above just keeps repeating.

The bars say they sell "strong" or "very strong buckets of cocktail" and have signs out front "we don't check ID".  But if they did there's street vendors with picture menus of fake ID.  Budget traveling kids of any country that can afford free time appear to running riotous here. 

After dinner and a few sweaty blocks of action surveying, we sat down for a beer generally in front of where we are staying.  We're on the 6th floor (top) of a place and our room is off this street, but it's above what we surmised to be the most popular nightclub here judging by the stream of hipsters waking in.  Teenagers sure put a lot of effort into their outfits.  Jimmi Hendrix replica outfits complete with the hair and semi-stache, girls matching bright turquoise stilettos to their bright turquoise glasses, and everything in between.  My good deed for the night was when the big white steroided tattooed bikers arrived on some totally sweet looking street rods to claim a table, then moved up off street level when another one freed up, one forgot his "jacket" on the back of a chair and it fell and started getting trampled in the action.  I took it back to Mr. Tatoo with Skin Head and Handle Bar Moustache.  I now have endeared myself to a local skull crusher.

I think there's more commerce here than Cambodia by multiples, this city has the same population roughly as Cambodia but is obviously on another level.  The 40 minutes of multilevel freeway driving and massive downtown we passed, everything brightly lit and well constructed.  It's amazing what an hour flight will do, it's like we time traveled.  I guess never being colonized and skipping hosting the war on Thai soil really helped. 

It's 30 degrees and night.  This place is intense.  But heat seems more irrelevant each day, I got hot soup for dinner.  Maybe I should remember that for next warm weather bike race (I wish I had time to go in advance and acclimate better, but short of that the heater in the room at night for sleeping and hot workouts help).