Pizza

Wow, this must be some good pizza:

General Thoughts about Bangkok

Bangkok, I have found, is a nice place. The food is good and the city is relatively clean. One thing that I found to be quite surprising is that there are a huge number of people here who speak legible English and almost all signs are printed in both Thai (sample below) and English:



General points:

• It is fairly easy to move around here. There are taxi's and tuk-tuk's everywhere and these guys are generally aggressive, following you around and showing off pictures of girls you may be interested in.
• The written form of the Thai language, other than numbers, is a Brahmic (Indic) script. Since almost everything is written in both languages in Bangkok, a basic understanding of this script is not mandatory.
  
• The Thai people seem to be the friendliest people I have ever encountered. Everyone here is interested in helping out or talking. The service in restaurants and the hotel I am staying at is extremely attentive.
• The food is delicious. Today I had a Japanese feast for lunch, in the states, the equivalent lunch would have been about 60-70% more expensive.
  
• Public transportation (sky train) is quick, cheap and clean.
• Everything can be found in the streets, from complete meals, hair cuts, clothes alterations to key makers, these vendors are quite flexible.
• There is a large number of middle aged white men around here.
  

Man receiving haircut in the street:




Streetside alterations:

A Quick Snack...

While walking through the Tops Supermarket I noticed this tasty treat, pre-fried fish, just unwrap and eat. Talk about convenience:

Pad Thai

Today I finally found a restaurant that had Pad Thai and it was certainly delicious.

This is exactly how it looked when they brought it to the table, notice the rather large prawn stationed directly on top of the noodles:

Street Vendors

Here are some pictures of random street vendors around Bangkok:

Pictures from Hotel.

Here are some shots from the hotel balcony:

Hello from Thailand

Hello, I am sitting in Bangkok, Thailand enjoying myself right now. So far, what i have seen is nice, food is delicious and streets are busy with activity. This picture was taken at the National Stadium BTS Station:

Room With A View

Here is the view from my hotel room, it was quite nice. I stayed at the Westin Grand (location), even though it got mixed reviews I found it to be quite nice and would definitely stay there again. Green Point Stadium can be seen in the background of the first picture. This stadium will house many of the World Cup 2010 games, including a quarter final and semi final match.

Mama Africa

The food at this restaurant was quite good:

Mosques

I was quite surprised to discover that Cape Town had a significant Muslim population. There were a number of Mosques scattered throughout the city. This particular mosque had a very nice door:

Unusual Paint Job

This building, located in downtown Cape Town, had an unusual paint job:

Meat Dealer

This woman cooking and selling miscellaneous meat parts on the side of the road. Some of the products that she was reselling were similar to the sheep's heads (smiley) discussed earlier in the blog.

Assorted Township Housing

These houses were mostly built illegally, they are built without permits and are considered squatter housing. The South African government is currently building new, permanent housing in these locations but the current occupants need to be relocated. The government has been having some issues with this task since the new housing is not free.

As you can see, houses come in all shapes and colors:

More Views From the Townships

Here are some pictures from the Townships.

This kitchen is shared by several families that live in dormitory style housing. When the people were forcibly relocated here by the apartheid government an entire family shared a single bedroom and up to 15 families shared this common area:




The kitchen sink:








The newer dormitory housing being built by the government. I believe that a room in this building costs R300/month, whereas the other dormitory was free.




Church: