... Massages were only $7 and hour?

You would get two in two days, right? To be honest, Bangkok has not been the best but the massages here are unreal. Imagine a tiny Thai woman using her entire body weight on your back and just becoming  a mushy ball of dough under her, then when you least expect it, she twists your whole torso in half and things you never thought could crack do. I might be addicted. It's the perfect mix of pain and pleasure. 

The massages probably stick out as the highlight so far because everything else has felt extremely stressful. Which I suppose is to be expected in a city of 10 million people. Still, I was surprised to have a hard time adjusting to the crazy fast paced crowded streets, odd smells of street food meat and garbage, and just boiling in the heat and getting constantly turned around and lost. Our first day trying to make it to Wat Pho to see the famous sleeping Buddha took about four times as long as it should have but we got to see quite a bit of the city which was cool... but 3 days was plenty.

A big highlight of the trip so far include meeting up with my mom's friend Deb's old foreign exchange student named Champ who lives in Bangkok. He is probably the nicest human being I have ever met and took us out to an awesome authentic Thai restaurant and insisted on treating all of us even though we had  never met. It was so generous and we got to try lots of interesting Thai food we wouldn't normally have ordered. Thanks Champ! 

Other highlights: Eating a scorpion, tracking down a sex show in Pattpong where girls blew out lit birthday cakes with their... trying laughing gas, getting giant blisters on the first day of walking, convincing a hotel to let us use their pool for the day, seeing the floating markets while extremely hungover, Khao San Road craziness, lots of temples, and un-neutered cats with balls. 

So far so good although not all of those were positive highlights. Rachel, Anna and I are on the night bus now to Krabi hoping that the 12 hour ride will be worth a few weeks in the southern islands. I'm looking forward to more relaxing days to be able to do some exploring! All for now.