The street food was overall quite good, but I did get a grizzly sausage the first day that had the texture of ground up cat feet. My friend, Massey, made it safely and on schedule to Bangkok, but we weren't there long before heading to the island, Koh Phangan, for the infamous full moon party.
The highlight of Bangkok for me was sitting ringside at a live Muay Thai event. I couldn't believe how young some of the fighters were. The first pair literally looked 12 years old. During the most exciting fights, the crowd cheered after every blow. Although betting is illegal, all the Thais were yelling and betting amongst themselves. We wanted to participate, but we couldn't understand a word they were saying. It was such a small stadium that there were no locker rooms. You could see the fighters getting ready right outside the bathrooms. The whole place had a gritty character to it. Before each fight, they fighters did a ceremonial dance and then a song, the same one every time, was played during the fight. The music sped up to follow the action. When one guy got knocked out cold, they threw him on a stretcher and carried him off without even putting a precautionary neck brace on or waiting for him to regain consciousness.
On our last day, one of our main goals was to buy bus/ferry tickets to Koh Phangan. When we were looking at a map, a Thai guy came over and helped us by giving us directions, but saying, among other things, that several of the tourist attractions in that area were closed because it was the queen's birthday and that the normal market is just a tourist market and told us how to get to a more authentic market. When he heard we were going to Koh Phangan, he told us not to buy tickets where we were planning because they were too expensive there and we should go to the government-run tourist office instead. We were skeptical, Massey even more so than I, but we decided to check out the tourist office anyway. When we got there, we asked if it was the queen's birthday, and they said no, that was last month. I don't think it was really a government-run office. They tried to sell us an overpriced ticket but contradicted themselves several times. We ended up buying the tickets from our originally chosen travel agent, followed by drinks toasted to the queen's birthday.