Bangkok, Thailand

View into the local village from my quaint attic room in an old colonial villa. The grand buttercream facade sits at the end of this tiny "Soi" (street) crowded with crooked wooden houses, smoking street carts and old men who sit shirtless on reclining beach chairs in front of slowly whirring box fans, reading the paper or blankly watching the neighborhood rumble along. The big yellow house is complicated evidence of the ever present paradox between poverty and luxury, East and West. A room costs as much as a roadside motel 8 in USD but is worth a week's salary of its neighboring residents. After 10 days I've grown accustomed to the sounds of Thai streets in the early morning--roaring motorbikes, a chorus of unfamiliar bird calls, the constant rise and fall of hurried conversation in a language I can't understand. A bittersweet goodbye goes to Bangkok and it's hot, dense streets with unpredictable pavement, the harrowing, seatbelt deprived tuk tuk rides of 80mph surrender, the wild, unending labyrinth of alleyways and market aisles, and the numerous kind strangers who through miming and smiles helped me along my way, khob khun kaa.