On my way out of the guest house this morning I stopped to take a look at the register - Stacy checked in this morning. Tracked her down in the dorm room and woke her up - she'd landed early thins morning. The funny thing is that she hadn't even noticed my name two lines above hers when she was filling in her info. I sat around waiting for her then hung out for a while. Hit the brand new internet cafe next door - it just opened today. In the afternoon I resumed my ticket quest. I spent 45 minutes in a taxi to get to the Emirates office - the traffic is not nice in Bangkok. At the office my request was turned down, because I didn't have enough miles - the guy in Dubai had neglected to mention all the legs that I hadn't used. So after carefully explaining everything to her the representative couldn't figure out a reason why I couldn't do what I wanted to and wrote a very long explanation to the office, so again I have to wait until tomorrow. I think it's going to work out though.
After leaving the office I sampled some of the street food - a sweet crape type thing - yum. The street food in general looks excellent. Crossing a canal I looked down and saw a boat bus go by and thought that sounded much nicer than a hour an a half in bus, and it was going more or less the right way. I figured if I ended up lost I could always take a taxi. Ten minutes later I was on my way.
On the boat I was feeling pretty good about Bangkok - and city where an hour in a bus can be replaced by 20 minutes on a boat can't be all bad. It's a huge bustling, crowded, frantic city, but there are huge islands of calm in the many wats (temple complexes). It's definitely in your face, but in a friendly way. Plus with the the food, the budget prices, and all the smiling people well, I'm starting to like this city.
After two boats I'd gone as far as I could on the water. A very pleasant hour walk got me back to the guest house. Stacy and I had cocktail hour (margaritas!) and then dinner at the lodge - it was very good. After dinner I hung out and talked with some of the other people passing though.
