so the train, yes that glorious hunk of steel i love so much with all it's beauty and splendor n stuff. we got on the train and made it out of bangkok on pure fumes. it was wonderful though. at this point we survived on a series of power naps and it wasn't the end of that. we fell asleep and then awoke to a bottle of sangsom which was a delightful treat! i love roosting in the doorway of the cars while whizzing steadily through the fields and jungle. seeing buddha's pass by at 60-90k and saying hi to all the dogs along the way. there was plenty of food from locals at stops to keep me going with this horrible habit of not really sleeping. it's hard when you never actually sit in your life to sit this long. i'm serious folks! freakin impossible is more like it. anyways, in the morning i have my rice porridge from a local at a stop and then charity gets hungry so we go to the dining car that nobody seems to know exist. i'm sure i spoke of it before but you have benches and tables which can be very nice indeed. they had no chili and the only thing we could get to season her porridge was black pepper. it was bland but edible minus the meat in it which was almost as bad as the time i was hopping trains through fort worth in the summer and got a roast beef sandwich with the last change i had. after devouring most of it i noticed on the wrapper it was ham...i assumed roast beef from the color of the meat. yeah, you get the idea. anyhow, a couple of naps and some beautiful jungle later, we made it to chiang mai! wait it was actually lampung but we thought it was chiang mai. ok one hour or so to go and we made it! whew! we go down to rathvithi with taarna to exchange currency and take her to internet cafe so she could find the place she was staying. then continued onto our guest house, mountain view. the room we sequestered was not the taj mahal i had last time but more of a four seasons. the laundry area was outside our window and the street to the other. still, we had a hot shower piped in and an amazingly comfortable bed. i was craving my old room though, 21, the room of solace. but at this point it was time to eat and get ready for the initial dentist visit the following day. so we headed down to the fantastic reality of the night market because i HAD to have charity try the best mango lassi in the world. which unfortunately wasn't there anymore. so we go searching for food in a tourist paradise while once again being reminded that thailand while being the land of smiles, is also the land of useless clutter and plastic. i swear you get more plastic bags than shwegmanns gave you in new orleans. getting a bottle of water, two, getting take away rice and chicken, six. fascinating, really, oh did i mention that i can't stand bne. ugh, what and eyesore. i know he is from s.f. too so it's close to home the disrespect he put forth here. anyways, time to visit the tantalizing night food market and discover the best pork buns on the planet which happen to be right across from the guest house and i am eating two now. ok prepare for dentist. so it shall begin.
we woke up in the morning took the first of three showers for the day, which i might add is necessary to be polite due to the fact thai people don't sweat and therefore we stinky americans, which is quite factual, really, smell your armpit, ok. it also cools you down quite well. where was i? oh yes, showering, we showered laid under the fan for a minute ( best fans here) and went out for breakfast at blue diamond. i love this place for breakfast. it's expensive (like 90B/2.75us a meal) but well worth it. the owners are smart people. they not only built a healthy place to eat but marketed it so well. props to them. from there we hit wawee coffee for some gaa-faa yen (gah-fey yen) or iced coffee and headed to a couple of wats. then went and got some lunch and hit the guest house for another shower and minute of solace. which we received because i got our room switched out to the old one! so happy about that. from there it was time to trollop to the gentle land of grace dental clinic. i found out that i wasn't going with the original plan at all. i am going to work towards some implants (which means i come back again!) and i was going to come back for gum surgery at 6.30. no big deal right? charity got seen and had two fillings replaced and is getting four more done and her wisdom teeth out (two are cracked). she is also getting a cleaning! her input was they were very gentle and considerate of her. which i knew would be the case. so we leave there and i take us the wrong way to trying to find lanna coffee so we catch a sawngtheaw to the big mall instead seeing as lanna isn't open (anymore?). we go shop around for nothing really and get some chocolate sticks (basically croissant) and coffee buns (stupidly delightful) at mr. bun my favorite little bakery stand after i already indulge in dairy queen., something i wouldn't be caught dead doing at home. then we head across the street to a turkish coffee place. yes, turkish coffee, who knew? we enjoyed it while resting for about an hour and had the owner read us our fortunes from the grounds. apparently i am holding onto a problem from the past that is associated with a relic. he hopes my problem ends soon. i am still wondering what it could be. i honestly don't know how some of these places stay open when i never see anyone else at them. side business im sure but still. mind boggling. anyhow, we walk back ot the dentist getting there right on time and i go in. it turns out that i need about an hour and a half for the surgery which involved stretching my gum's out on all my front teeth. i didn't know that meant cutting my gum's away from my mouth behind and in front of my teeth and then sewing them up all along the inside. bloody mess that it was. still they did good and i have no pain. but two and a half hours later i am glad charity waited for me because i went out of the room and fell out almost. i sat down and was burning up and sweating but my body was cold and clammy, super light-headed which i was having a hard time describing to the short staff that was there waiting for me to finish and a bit overwhelmed with the work done in my mouth. i had some orange juice and got better. we went back via tuk tuk to the guesthouse and got some food and leo beer. sat down and indulged before my continuation of fixing the accident continued. that being antibiotics again. fortunately the reason i had the surgery was my front teeth were still good enough to save for implants later which will make the process faster and cheaper. i also have a protective covering on both sides of my gums that charity says look like a mouthguard but i think more resembles silly putty in my mouth. really, put a newspaper to my upper grill and you could copy the funny pages. i am also going to get a temporary plate for my upper mandible so that it will be full of teeth th\us making it easier for me to eat in the future. exciting, yes, it is. time for bed and relaxation, we passed out watching heroes on my nokia 810.
let me take a moment of silence for the herbed whiskey bar and it's wonderful joyn it brought many a person. we will miss you.
today we walked to breakfast and i went to exchange currency on the way. went in bank and they don't take travelers cheques. i got annoyed because i had signed it already thus making it harder for me to cash in. but i changed in a twenty and we walked to blue diamond out of the way. i lead us down the wrong soi. hunger makes me forgetful. really. i like to emphasize with the word really it seems. i never knew that about myself, huh. then we walked to exchange and to my optometrist. i got new glasses and sunglasses (thanks for convincing me charity)armani glasses at that. i'm fashionable, what! it was like $230 for two sets of nice prescription glasses and one eye is near sighted the other far on me so the lenses take more. still not too bad and all the dental work and 2.5 hours of surgery yesterday was $286us. that's for both of us. so i got my morning bag of fresh mango and dealt with the tuk tuk drivers wanting to take us to tiger kingdom oh so badly and went for iced coffee. then caught a sawngtheaw to this place called kao soi prince on the otherside of the river for some amazing soup. holy cow i was in taste bud heaven. you ahve to go here. maybe even fly here eat soup go home. really kow soi is the bestest in the eastest. then we went to warorot market and got some locks for our lockers at home in the studio (which we moved two days before we left) and a new small machete as well as some other trinkets at the outside market. continued on inside for dried mango and sleeping clothes and chili oh my. it is crazy in there. another must on my list of them. from there we continued down the flower market which consist of, you guessed it tons of flower stand and decorations for business and buddha. which created beautiful in my book and smells amazing. went to tha phae road and to the wat with donald duck eating noodle i spoke of before. this time i explored the wat further and ended up having a monk come and call me into a room for a blessing. he told me that i would live a hundred years and that i have had lots of accidents. then he prayed to buddha and blessed me on my journey through life and said no more accidents. i got a weaved bracelet with a little buddha in it to guide me on the path. we walked back to pick up my glasses from the optometrist on rathvithi, i don't have the name handy but i will later. they rock, go there for all your visionary needs, and came back to guest house, it rained all day. i went to get us food, fried fish n rice for charity and green curry with scallops for me. oh and pork buns. of course. i have been buying stuff and ordering food in thai so when i ordered the curry the lady gave it to me and said 25 baht but her friend said no hes farang charge him 30 and she did. hey, what can you do. it was enough for two meals. less than a dollar and delicious, indeed. now i am here and about to go back to sleep. so if this makes no sense it is because i am not totally awake. oh, tomorrow we go to chiang rai and then more dental antics on teh 13th. keep on checking and i'll keep on typing, 10-4 over and out....
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