Fear and Loathing in...Thailand?

As some of you may be aware, I recently returned from spending my winter holidays in the beautifully depraved Kingdom of Thailand. Neither describing my experience there in its entirety nor briefly summing up the travels of my companions and I sound particularly enticing, I will simply posit some of my observations and feelings at key points throughout the journey in convenient list form. Here goes:

- Cockroaches are not nearly as crunchy as you would think, though slightly more flavorful.
- For a religion that heavily emphasizes the unimportance of material goods, the Buddhists in Thailand sure use an awful lot of gold on their holy artifacts.
- Not drinking the water doesn't do much good if you eat the ice anyway.
- The maximum number of times one can vomit without consuming any water is somewhere between 7-9.
- Watching teenagers climb into a ring and beat each other senseless while surrounded by transvestite dancers and being served by a pregnant waitress makes one feel pretty much exactly like you would imagine.
- Elephants really are extremely well-endowed.
- Nothing, I repeat, Nothing is free. Even the public toilets. God Bless capitalism.
- The number of stars visible from a remote mountain village is roughly 1000x greater than in any large city. It really is amazing.
- Sometimes it's a good idea to ask if there is a "Special" menu.
- Jet Skis = Awesome.
- Germans might possibly be the most friendly people on the face of the Earth.
- Diving through a flaming ring into a tuck-and-roll in the middle of a 2000 person rave is worth every bruise and burn you get.
- In Japan the first English phrase children are taught in school is "This is a pen." In Thailand it's "Hey you! 10 baht!"




My Maserati does 185