1. Bangkok is huge. period. In some areas it is incredibly filthy...yet its parks, skytrain, malls, and metro system are way nicer and cleaner than anything we have at home. Montreal's metro is so hot in the summer but here all the trains (sky and metro) are air conditioned with nice seats and I have yet to see a single indication of grafitti.

2. There is a huge disparity between those with money and those without. Depending on where you go you can find shoes from over $150C to less than $4 and hotel accomodation from $500+ per night to $3...Starbucks coffee is the same price here as at home and there are even the occasional Haagen Daaz stores that sell ice cream at $4 per scoop

3. having no schedule whatsoever is pretty nice. it doesn't really make sense in my head yet what that actually means...but I don't have anything planned for 15 minutes from now when I'm done on the net, or later today, or tomorrow, or the day after....

4. The Thai people are incredibly kind - especially up north in Chiang Mai. Just walking around the city yesterday with Paul and Jisca we were stopped a couple of times by a couple people who just wanted to know where we were from and to sing the praises of their city and country. One young man who stopped us is a McGill grad - so we're going to take him and his family for supper later this week and he'll drive us around outside the city.

5. Typing takes a long time - I'm done. miss you all