Hitting the streets of Bangkok

Long time no see, eh? Thanks to intermittent Internet in our dorm room, then the travel and lousy Internet at the hotel we are staying at... yeah, it's been far too long.

Brief update...
-We spent two days in Nha Trang, one of them at Vinpearlland. The *best* place to take the kids for a holiday, I swear. The waterpark and amusement rides and bumper cars and arcade all added up to a lot of fun. We also visited some Cham towers and a really huge Buddha.
-Zach went home after one more costly weekend in Hanoi.
-We said goodbye to students, friends and shopkeepers before heading up to Hanoi last Friday (11/9).

On the morning of the 12th, we flew via Asia Air to Bangkok where we were greeted by a city more cosmopolitan than any other I've seen. Could there be anything further from the streets of Hanoi than the streets of Bangkok? I think not.

So for the past three days, we've been checking out the shopping life of the city. We visited the Siam Paragon, an astoundingly large shopping center with Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana, Porsche and even Lamborghini stores. A bit mind-blowing to see the amount of money that people can and do spend.

Then there's the shock of the sex industry here and just how overt it is. The foreigners who come here with their pasty white beer bellies and loads of cash make us all throw up just a bit when we see them fondling local women. Or are the women? It seems that for those dressed up in what I would deem clothes suitable for prostitutes (or 'prostates' as Audrey often misspeaks), out of them I'd venture to guess that a third or more are actually men. We've had to have conversations that I hoped would never happen, but the kids have become better world citizens and more understanding of the ways that the world works, including why it's so abhorrently wrong.

As for our plans, we head out tomorrow morning on the train. We'll head down to Surat Thani for a night, then take a ferry over to Koh Samui for a few days of rest and relaxation (something I could certainly use about now). I'm fighting a nasty cold and hoping that the four days of doing nothing much will help me feel well enough to do the rest of the trip. On the 21st we train on to Penang where we switch trains, then continue on to Kuala Lumpur. We'll spend three days there we get on that final flight and head back to PDX.

I will try to update, but it's harder than I'd like to get on the computer and the Internet (this is thanks to Lyle in Bangkok). I'm getting emails, but responding is difficult. For brief updates, you can check out my facebook page.