Ahhhh, life is good here. The Westin Hotel= occidental luxury and class. The Eastin Hotel = Asia’s me-too at 1/4 the price.This hotel is excellent. Truly a fantastic deal.

The Eastin Hotel is situated right next to the major interchange of the two (seemingly) main highways near the Victory monument, near Petchaburi Road and Makasan Road. It has all the amenities of a high end place with nearly the same level of quality but I’m paying a low to mid range price. I don’t think I’ll be staying anywhere else in Bangkok from now on. The only problem being it’s connection to the BTS and metro, tonight I’ll see just how much of a problem that is. More about the hotel later.

Relaxing at the pool, this is me just before I got my first Thai sunburn.I’ve pretty much spent the last 24 hours hanging out in and around the hotel after yesterday’s bullshit. I headed out to a couple malls this afternoon however, but aside from having lunch in the foodcourt I didn’t buy anything. Lunch was pretty good and cheap though. Less than 100 baht makes it the cheapest meal I’ve had in Thailand so far. The thing is that everytime I have any kind of Thai food I can’t help but spend the next few hours carefully monitoring the state of my belly. I keep hearing about this “Bangkok belly” that everyone gets and despite adhering (or trying) to the guidebooks’ advice about not drinking water, avoiding crushed ice and preparing for pain when the restaurant’s kitchen is tucked away in the back, I seem to be managing okay. I’m not eating much - going to bed starving every night, but at least I haven’t been sick yet. I just wish I could get them to turn down the spice a couple notches on the curry dishes.

YUMMY! I guess this is how the locals keep the city from infestation.Speaking of food, I saw the craziest foods at the little food stands on Petchaburi Road today… fried cockroaches! Fried grasshoppers and locusts! Fried mealworms that looked like maggots (or are they just maggots?)! Oh my god. I didn’t realize Thailand was one of those insect eating countries. Good God. Wait till you see a popcorn bowl sized dish full of four inch long cockroaches with little bits of oil fried to the joints with their shiny backs glistening even more sharply in the Bangkok sun and feelers and legs sticking out all over the place. BLECH!!! Maybe I’ll try a grasshopper as long as no one tells me it’s a locust

Anyway, tonight I’m heading off to some “beer gardens” place by Lumpini Stadium with Marc. I was going to go to a muay thai boxing match, but will save it for another night.  But yeah, bad luck for him, an ATM ate his bank card today. Brutal. That’s why I carry three