........................................Arrived in Bangkok and what do I decide to do first? You guessed it, compete in 7th annual Bangkok Ultimate Frisbee hat tournament with a bunch of people from Seattle! Now for those so un-groovy as to not be down with what a hat tourney is, it means you rank yourself from 1-3, myself being a 1, and then they draw teams from a hat. I was chosen to be on the green team, or as we called ourselves, obscene green, or green machine, or the green monster. It was kind of strange to arrive in a place so crazy, experience a culture shock, and then for the first time in 3 months find myself surrounded by Americans, 6 of whom come from Seattle. The green party was undefeated the first day, we really kicked ass, and I really didn't contribute all that much, but I tried hard. We played on the Thai Army base in Bangkok, so we had a backdrop of marching solders in camo, had to walk by a real scary soldier standing at attention in front of the restrooms, and listen to the firing range all day, really felt like we were at war. Oh, and we had all the bar-b-q and great Thai food we could eat, and all the beer we could drink. The second day, the green team was maybe a little over confident, and we lost to, I hate to admit it, the pink team, or Mr. Pink. Why did WE have to lose to Mr. Pink? It's not easy being green! They went on to win the tournament however, and we got to start getting our drink on earlier.
Other than that, my buddy Luke and I explored the Grand Palace and Wat Pho, and ate dinner at a place called Condoms and Cabbages, and almost walked right into an elephant in a strip of bars. Got to know the public transit system, and had some Tex Mex. Then we took the night train to Chiang Mai, but I will be back to Bangkok to fly out to Tokyo at the end of March.
