I arrived at 12:30am the night before last after an eighteen hour flight (or maybe more) from Vancouver, with a brief stopover in Beijing. It was a miracle that the bike and my paniers arrived safely since I hadn’t packed them very well. The bike box was fastening with tape which I noticed was broken when the bike got to Bangkok, but the bike was still in there and seems okay, though I’ve not yet ridden it. I spent an hour re-assembling it at the airport, wondering whether to ride the 25km into Bangkok, but in the end found a reasonably priced taxi that could take me and the bike. I didn’t notice at the time that I was sitting on the left (in the front passenger seat) and that we were driving on the left hand side of the road. I hadn’t realized they drive on the left here, so it’s a good thing I didn’t try and cycle.

I wrote some things on the laptop but can’t get them up here because I’ve not been able to find anywhere in Bangkok with wireless internet access, or with ehternet access that I could just plug into the laptop. I tried a university library today but they wouldn’t let me in because I was wearing shorts. Now I’m in the public library, still wearing shorts, but using one of their computers.

The reason I’m wearing shorts is 1) it’s pretty hot here and 2) I did my laundry this morning, washing my clothes by hand in cold water using a washboard and a scrubbing brush. Apparently you can pay someone 20Bahts (about 30p) to do it, which is maybe what I’ll do next time since I noticed when I hung my white socks up to dry they didn’t look any cleaner than when they went into the wash.