Another day, another round of catchup (Thailand)

Time for some more catchup. There's not really all that much left to say about the remaining parts of our honeymoon. Our short time spent in Kota Bharu had two main highlights, namely the general hospital and the night market. Not a lot of noteworthy pictures there. It was then about a 45 minute taxi ride to the border (we really weren't in the mood to deal with a public bus that day) where we got dropped off. I enjoy walking across international borders. Here's a shot leaving Malaysia

And here's a shot preparing to enter Thailand. A reasonably organized crossing, where it helps that both countries drive on the same side of the road (the left). Last visit, when we crossed from Cambodia to Thailand (also by walking, also after getting dropped off by car at the border, but driving the roads on the Cambodia side is a bit more of an adventure than in Malaysia), there's the issue that Cambodia drives on the right side and Thailand drives on the left. In this case, Thailand sort of "won". The bridge connecting the countries was left hand drive, which on the Thailand side neatly flowed into their organized highway system. On the Cambodia side it didn't really matter, because there really was no organized system of roads at the border. The bridge just ended in a pretty rundown and disorganized location, so there wasn't much of a side of the road to be driving on there period.

Our remaining time in Thailand was occupied mostly be eating, getting massages, and shopping. No, this isn't at a conventional fruit stand. All of the fruit that Lorien is standing in front of is plastic. One of the odder sights we saw at the (huge) Chatuchak [sp?] weekend market. They had replicas of I think just about all of the exotic Southeast Asian fruits you can think of: mangosteen, longhan, durian, rambutan, lychee, bitter melon, to name a few. Perhaps you're seeing the theme of the tables at our wedding by now, if you didn't before? If only we could have gone on the honeymoon before the wedding, we could have bought plastic fruit for all of the tables and used those as centerpieces instead of the labeled cards. Although I'm not sure if then anybody would have known what table they were at. Ok, maybe banana would have known.

And here's another image from the market. Ok, so we're a little obsessed with cats, perhaps.

And here's a tuk-tuk driver in Bangkok doing what they do so well, just lounging around. It's not that they're lazy, there's just way too many tuk-tuk drivers. A tuk-tuk is basically a small, open cart attached to what I think is pretty much just a motorcycle drivetrain. They've I believe outlawed the older 2-stroke models in Bangkok (or maybe that's just for new tuk-tuk's?) in favor of 4-stroke models, which is I think improving the air quality somewhat. Or maybe I'm just more used to the pollution than I wsa the first time around. Most guidebooks now recommend against using them -- if you're getting a fair fare, you can probably get just about the same price in a metered taxi; and many of the drivers (esp. in the heavily touristed areas) try to charge you way too much (it helps to know how much a comparable taxi fare would be); and if they quote you a way low fare they're probably just trying to be a tout and drag you to some place where someone else is going to try to sell you some crap you don't want. Nevertheless, we've found them quite fun. Even for about the same price, and despite sharing the same roads, they can be WAY faster than a taxi. They can squeeze past spaces that a taxi could only dream of, and tuk-tuk drivers have a pretty low respect for local traffic laws. One more word of transport advice, though, is that if you're going a long distance from north to south or vice-versa and it's during the day, the best combination of cheap, fast, and fun is to take a river taxi, and just bypass the city traffic.

Anyway, that's the next bit of catchup. More on another night.