11. Thirty hours in Bangkok

We got in the taxi and headed for the Baptist Guesthouse. Giant Billboards sprickled the skyline, many in English, advertisting things like "New York to Hong Kong, in record 17 hours," VHS, and International schools. Once we got off the highway we drove down skinny roads, littered with even more motorists, their mouths covered with white masks, evidence of the extreme pollution there.
Street venders, people, tourists, crowded buildings, dirty sidewalks, and a million colors, signs, words, and other stimuli jumping out at you like so much confetti. We finally got to Soy 13, which seemed more like an alley than a street (soy means street). Sandwiched at the very end was a small gate and a short sign that said "Baptist Guest House." There was a guard there with a small dog (actually all the dogs in Thailand are small - lot's of ridgebacks...). we swung the gate open, and walked with our bags to the guesthouse - a large old house with wood floors, long hallways, most of the rooms upstairs, a large common room downstairs stacked with books and magazines, lots of chairs. It looked just like you would imagine it looking, it might as well have been 1938 in Bangkok or something. This nice older couple from the states (they were probably in their late 60s, early 70s) came up to meet us. They run the guesthouse. How fun is that - I hope my husband do something adventurous like that when we are older...so awesome. Everyone can be useful, age is no excuse! They handed us a manilla envelope, it had a form we needed to fill out, some info, and our room keys. The cost of the room, with tip, ended up being 420 bot, split 2 ways, it was only about $5 each. Thailand is cheap! You can get a room for 100 Bot if you need to, or cheaper.