what's the capital of thailand?

the quiet, steady rhythm of our bus ride through the night to bangkok was restful and serene. the abrupt stop, lights, and max volume thai pop at 4:45am, marking our arrival, was downright obnoxious. our whole busload was disoriented and delerious, standing on some unknown street in the rain, with a dozen tuk-tuk drivers negotiating "fair" prices to drive us to koh san road, a destination "too far to walk." fortunately, we latched onto a girl who knew the way, and walked the hardly 2 blocks to koh san, finally making our way out of the rain into the only business open at that dark hour - mcdonalds. we regrouped and planned our attack over an egg mcmuffin and bitter coffee. we had penetrated the beautiful chaos that is bangkok.

from our cheap cheap guesthouse, sweety's, we sprung into some of the colorful corners of the city. the weekend market was a dizzying maze of stalls and booths selling everything imaginable. its was a sensory cyclone. my brain was using so much energy trying to process the infinite trinkets, trifles, and t-shirts moving endlessly outward in every direction, that i kept forgetting to walk and would just stand there, circuitry sizzling. i nearly malfunctioned a few times. then tracy found some 10 cent popcicles that helped to numb the senses a bit.

we later connected with jon and kim quinley and a few of their kids at their house in bangkok. they are good friends with the haydn's, some friends from virginia, and have been working with microfinance a host of other community-developing projects in bkk and throughout southern thailand for about 8+ years now. we felt an instant connection with this interesting couple, and spent a long evening sharing stories, exchanging ideas, and giving props to God for all that He's doing in that place. jon and kim are a dynamic model of faith engaged in artful obedience. they are living, laughing pictures of God's grace. we were blessed by their generosity and clear vision.

we floated the rivers, walked the streets, shopped the alley markets, scarfed down dim som, smelled the whole spectrum of the city's olfactory options, denied tuk-tuk and custom-tailored suit offers, ate street cart food, haggled ad nauseum for all manner of gifts, watched some traditional thai dance while eating spicy cuttlefish, melted side by side in an upstairs room under the strong hands (and feet and elbows) of thai masseuses, and experienced the hair-cutting equivalent of a kung fu master performing his magic on tracy's hair. each event is a blog of its own; each a story, by necessity, reduced to a caption, to a phrase. such has been the inevitable fate of most of our adventures afoot: vibrant flowers smashed and squeezed and drained into essential oils - good-smelling but only a liquid fraction of the whole beautiful goodness of the event, flower. in a final phrase, bangkok was ultra-sensory, too big to experience in 3 days, and a place we hope to visit again someday, God willing.