It can be frustrating to be a tourist in Bangkok--I am a constant target for swindling. Particularly, the taxi drivers here can be rather difficult to deal with. When they see a white girl get into their cab, they quote an exorbitant price rather than turn on their meter. When I threaten to get out of the cab, they acquiesce and put on the meter. The metered price is, of course, far less than the original quoted price. However, upon reaching my destination, they then claim to have no change. To spite them, I dig through my wallet to find every last baht to pay them the exact fare. I have only ridden in a cab once or twice in the US, but I've never encountered this swindler spirit. Perhaps it is because I am not a foreigner in america, and therefore do not have a target drawn on my forehead. Thailand is a country that will rarely take your money by force, but if they can squeeze a few extra baht out of you through coersion, they will.

I am evidently the only white person in Bangkok who walks anywhere. In fact, most of the thai people don't walk much either. I know this because all of the women seem to be teatering around in cheap little heels. In Bangkok, tourists get shuttled via taxi or tuk tuk from one wat to the next, and from mall to mall, never allowed to wander off of the designated path. A few days ago as I was leaving the MBK, a giant frenetic mall specializing in cheap goods, and a parking guard starting calling to me, "Hey, where are you going? There's nothing to see down there!", refering to an enormous thoroughfare street where I was walking. He immediately assumed that because I was not walking toward a temple or another mall, that I must be lost. I, indeed, knew where I was headed. Off of the tourist path in Bangkok it is not seedy or unsafe, it is just less air-conditioned and their are fewer english pubs and Starbucks.