Thailand: Southern Islands - January 2007
Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation made from a post originally written in French. My apologies for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have been generated during the process. If you are reading French, click on the French flag below to access the original and correct text:
Here I am back in Bangkok, and not without pleasure, I must say... Ah! the return to civilization, it's good: no more mosquitoes and long live fast internet connections, restaurants, streets where it lives and shops worthy of the name!!!

That said, I am quite frustrated in my buying fever : I don't know if it's the dives that have narcotized my neurons, but after three weeks under the coconut trees, I managed to forget the secret code of my credit card...
In short, I screwed up three times trying to type in this damn code to withdraw money, because I thought I would have a well-deserved afternoon of shopping... Unfortunately, the ATM obviously ate my precious card (on the third mistake). Fortunately, I was able to get it back from the bank, which was open, with a kindly attendant behind the counter: phew!
Except that now, the card, even with the code, doesn't work anymore. It's automatically blocked for security reasons... I changed the few euros I was keeping just in case and I have enough to survive until tomorrow. But no futile purchases for the moment. It's infuriating!


I consoled myself by walking around. The streets of Bangkok are better than the TV. The show is permanent and free, between the small street restaurants, the street vendors, the strange and more or less unidentified food that passes under your nose, the lost tourists, the tuktuk drivers who rush on, the T-shirt and clothes sellers, the copycat CD dealers, the bondie stores where golden Buddhas are displayed in the window wrapped in plastic, the monotonous chants of the monks in the small temple that separates the street from my guesthouse on Khao San Road...
Weird... I don't feel like taking the plane back tomorrow!