I never thought I'd say this, but raw sewage definitely can spice things up. If your life ever becomes a shade too boring, consider it. Sure it harbors disease and is sometimes entertaining, but suspenseful too, you say?

Well, if there's a chance it's suddenly landing in your mouth, then, yes, it is.

No, weirdos, we're not talking Bangkok editions of Cleveland steamers or dirty-sanchezes here. ( Mom, Dad, and Poppa please do not google these terms. You will be excommunicated and crash your laptops). We're talking about transit on the cess canal of a city in excess of 10 million, ok? Big difference... I think. :-/

We happened on this delicious little stretch of "people-moving" in our mad dash to get to Soi Khao San for our Royal Nepal Air tickets. At 5:45 with the cars, taxis and buses all gridlocked around Siam Center, we had no choice but to find alternative transportation. At the advice of our driver, we jumped out of our new air-con taxi, into the storm and ran towards the river. As we soon discovered, alternative, this was.

Picture yourself on a class 3 river rapid ( I'm not kidding), only the grey water, violently thrashing up against the stained concrete recesses, bubbling, churning and spewing forth, barely contained in the rotting depths of the canal is NOT just water, but the excrement of everyone around you!

Yeeessss, imagine, if you dare, the long, wooden dinghy alarmingly full with business men, school children, and every token demographic ( including us as the smelly back-packers), skidding left, then right at 45 degree angles over the turbulent fecal chop, like a trans-am fish-tailing in the rain. Only, the parasitic worm of a boat, laden with stoney-eyed passengers ( truly intriguing considering the stench and likelihood of plague splashing into their faces) never calms down.

The boat continues to lurch and tilt uncontrollably in the littered passage until a deafening crack and gutteral grinding ensues,( the calming evidence of a well-maintained vessel ), reeling it backwards either 1. towards a strip of gangrene planks, to which you have no ladder or docking--I swear on my life, you have to LEAP IN THE RAIN or 2. away from the onslaught of other unwieldy craft. I try to ignore some holes, oozing grog from below, but my eyes seem to wander back nervously to the fissures admitting liquid that can, undoubtedly, kill us all.

Chugging along abominably through Thailand's capital, this waterway is a crude reminder that although it does have the pomp and glitter of a major metropolis, parts of the city can still be a bit from developed, in the Western definition. I fathomed a certain wakeboader realizing something's horribly amiss with his skiing tour in downtown BKK...

When the downpour becomes so thick and fat it pelts the water below, making it seem to rain from beneath, you really appreciate the thin tarps along port and starboard, mercifully bearing the toxic brunt of the spray. Unfortunately, I was so frozen in amazement as the gruesome voyage unfolded, that I didn't exploit the crumpled blue plastic at my feet until after some spray, and it was enough, moistened my eyes. Snapping my mind away from the cultures now in my eyes and the encroaching brownish sludge, I held that tarp up as high as I could, mentally splitting hairs on whether to breath through my nose or open my mouth. God was merciful on me, however, because prior to this .20 cent fare, he did allow me my jabs at the Red Cross for Typhoid and Japanese Encephalitis. :)

Troy, much smarter than me, is not on the side, but is sitting a few rows back, centered in the middle, with his shades on. Make-shift goggles, my little engineer. ( Mine, as you may remember, are probably on some deserving fish) Anyway, I can see that his eyes are narrowed, his mouth is puckered tightly closed, and he's intentedly bobbing his head to get a better view of the next "pier" through the slit above the plastic. He learned quickly( survival of the fittest-Asian public transportation can make anyone primal) that the "stops" for this are similar to the rest of BKKs public transportation: They don't stop. They slow down. You move quick, or don't get off.

You wait for the captain to bludgeon the engine once more, move quickly to up to the side, then lower the tarp and leap out all in one swift motion. If you wait for chivalry, you've missed your stop. As you can probably imagine, we were by no means "naturals" at this feat. I watched several others at the stops before ours, but it didn't help at all. Troy benefited from his long legs, landing the jump sufficiently. I, however, grated my shins along a few planks, soaking my pants finally pulling myself up with a new mud-like substance on my bare hands. One bottle of Purel later, I was feeling human again.

So, as I said, if you are needing some adventure in your life, pay 10baht and ride the Bangkok river ferry in the pouring rain. Sorry I have no pics of this spectacle, I couldn't rationalize the expense of fecal matter on the lens of my new $400 Nikon...

Our internet connection here is not good, so I can't upload anything new. Soon, I promise.
xoxooxoxox