messiestobjects: Okay Okay, After This Post, It Should Be Out Of My System, I Swear

So this guy, after seeing a picture of mine that Miss Luongo used in one of her posts, has posted one of my Centralia pictures over on his art site! So that's pretty cool. He posts something he comes across every day, and yesterday I got the props. So nyah nyah, everybody. Okay I'm done being 5 now. Go check it out though, he says really nice things about my mad photo skills (snicker). Okay okay, now I'm done. I've also added a permanent link to his main site on my sidebar, at the artist's studio. Thanks Shawn! And thanks, Miss Luongo, for liking the lonely little tree. Actually, as I recall, I took that picture of the tree and cross because Julie pointed it out to me in the first place. So really it was a collaborative art. (Art, hehee. <Kevin Macdonald sighs> My art...) Okay that's it, I swear.
Anyway, yesterday was a very long day. I went down to the Imperial city, a section in Bangkok where there is some really amazing stuff. Lots of Wats (temples), buddahs, and other really great architecture.

I took a snarfload of photos, probably too many. I think I overcompensated actually. I have a real problem with that. Firstly, it's the first time I've been in Asia, and seen up close some tripped out bona fide Asian insane architechture. I mean really, this stuff is wack, as the kids these days are saying. Secondly, I kept getting eyestrain. I had a real problem focusing my eyes in the viewfinder on my camera after a while... you would think that, after undergoing eye surgery, I'd take it easy, right? Well, taking into account the fact that I'm fanTAstically retarded, you'd know I didn't. Overcompensation man, that stuff'll kill you. Since I had trouble getting a clear view of what I was shooting, I just took 5 of everything. I actually filled up my 1 gig flash card in just over half a day. First time I've ever done that. So, consequently, I got 5 really mediocre shots of everything. Ho hum. It didn't help that Bangkok is a mecca for other Asian tourists, and anybody that's been anywhere knows what competing with them for photographs is like. A teeming mass of chattering little retired asian people and ridiculously outsized cameras, and bags and bags of camera equipment, all just to take tourist snapshots. Here's a shot that makes me want to call these two The Asian Snapshot Patrol, for some reason. I love the fingerless gloves. It's like 90° out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of tourist snapshots. It's all I do. But I have a very little Canon powershot pro that I got off of Scott at a very nice deal, and apparently I can do ART with it. (Snicker snicker. Okay okay, I'm done for real now, I swear.) (Shawn, if you're reading I'm not making fun of art or your page or anything; I'm just being five years old because I'm jazzed you liked my picture enough to call it art. Hee hee.)
Anyway. So, other than that, I haven't done much. Okay okay, I DID go over to check out the Nana complex... which is not a fear of nannies or grandmothers, but a three story carnivale of bars in the Sukhumvit section of Bangkok, right near where I'm staying.

It's got it all. Pubs with only men who haven't yet drunk enough courage to visit the other bars in the area (which is where I hung out, too properly shocked and apalled to stand for any of it), strip bars, bars that aren't necessarily hooker bars, but that have a suspiciously high ratio of hot Thai women to fat old pathetic greasy western men, and yes, transvestite bars. And okay yes, probably hooker bars, but I wouldn't know. I took a walkabout, and was cajoled at almost every point along the way. I must say that I found this particular brand of tout much more tolerable than any other place I've been to, although my anti-tout instincts remained intact.
So, as much fun as Bangkok is, I'll be leaving in a couple of days for Cambodia. I'm going to take a week or so there to check out Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat before heading back to Bangkok to fly home.