Settled in

Ahhhhhhhh. I am finally moved into my new place out here in Bangkok, Thailand...and what a place it is. Living in a crazy city without a moment to breath, I decided to splurge a bit and treat myself to a nice place with some nice amenities. Being comfortable with your home is very important, especially when that is your getaway from everything else. I will post a few pictures once I learn how to, but the view is incredible and the apartment is very comfortable- had to upgrade and get the aquarium-coffee table, haha. Its nice to be out here and among the people, I have tried to be friendly to an australian neighbor I have and that has been rewarding thus far. He showed me around a bit and got me a free month at his gym, pretty nice because I was thinking about working out, and paying, for the membership at the apartment's gym but it is pretty lousy compared to the one I he introduced me to.

Everthing else of the trip is completely new. Lost in Translation, if you will. The things we forever take for granit are now absent and can be frustrating. The difficulty of finding things in huge stores without being able to ask or read signs, the silence of taxi rides because of lack of a common language, every few minutes a child pulling at your shirt begging for money...it is all eye opening and certainly different from what we are used to. This is not what freedom sounds like, or is it? It is hard to say one is suffering or unhappy when they have very little to compare it to, this is life for so many, so out here I am a bit of an outcast and certainly a minority.

I ate lunch in the Bumrungrad Hospital Foodcourt today...wow! It has been rated by newsweek and cbs and nbc as one of the top hospitals in the world--and is HUGE in the world of Medical Tourism(where people travel around the world to get inexpensive surgeries). There are Saudi's everywhere, getting major operations done at a fraction of the cost it is in their country....all spending our oil money to buy their wives a new nose. Fill er up!

Life is good, it will certainly take a while to make myself more comfortable here, it is nice to be uncomfortable and lost though, certainly a change..... I know I will never fit in, but hopefully I learn to be more acceptable and stay safe in the villages of this beautiful country.