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Hi everyone!

Here I am in freaky Thailand. How about that government caused stock market crash to the tune of $24 billion dollars?! Something weird is always going on here. That visa screw job has utterly changed the tourist scene. Gone are all the old timers and their young Thai wives. I didn't know any of them, but you saw them everywhere and they walked around speaking Thai. Now tourist numbers have crashed, and the only tourists are new and totally ignorant of Thai language and culture. The Thais in town really look shocked, they're used to this certain level of familiarity with Thai culture, but they just chased all those types of foreigners away, the only one's here now feel nothing towards the Thais, they are just walking around on their vacation. You can feel the difference. Now this town is so silent in the evenings and nights. Before there were tuk tuks always buzzing around all night, but now it's just silent. On the other hand Thailand has 63 million people and only a few places were ever full of tourists, so almost everyone remains unaffected.

In fact, I detect a taste of back when I was in software during the '90s boom, if you mentioned being in software some very clear envy emerged, since everyone knew we were getting paid a lot. Now here in Thailand, it looks a bit like the vast majority of Thais are rather pleased that just certain areas are no longer getting all that easy tourist money. Seems that way to me, anyway.

I've applied for my Indian visa, I applied on the 21st, but they won't have it till Jan 3rd! Everyone says Indians are really slow in everything and keep very short hours, even my Indian friends have warned me of that!

So after hitting the wine bottle a bit the first couple days, now I'm in a very studious routine (with no wine!). Get up early, do breathing exercises, walk around town, go back to my room by 12, read until the sun goes down, go out for dinner, then hit the sack early. Rather nice, plus with the silent town it sure seems like I'm in some town I've never lived in before, oh well, seasons change.