this is the response to your email that tunred in to a decent summary of whats going on with me so I thought I would post it...

yea all is well here in BKK,
I have been in orientation for 3 days now roughly 9-5 and seeing the city at night.
I'm a long way from that european electronica bar and finally have the cahnce to sit down for a bit. My project still has a great deal of development to go through but right now I'm having a great time enjoying BKK and just relaxing in a way. I met an incredible monk(Krish) my first day who kidnapped(completely voluntarily) me for 5-6 hours to practice various mediation techniques and discuss buddist philosophy. VERY interesting. Im not willing to call myself a buddist (yet) but he definitely introduced me to some facinating ideas and recommended I consider the monkhood... to that I answered the only words I could muster 'thanks'.

The second night in BKK we went to a restaurant literally ON the Chao Phraya river that runs through the city and had a delicious meal of thai food/beer/iced coffee/and other delicious treats. As the tide came in the water began to seep in through the floor boards of the board walk almost to say"ok you've had enough fun, time to go"

I will post more on my week in Samui once I finally get on my computer and can post the photos because they really tell the story of that experience for me. It was fun, though not what I expected from a southern thai tropical island.

I am very excited abt traveling south to phang nga for this internship(though we will be in BKK for at least another week or so). I've received various reports of the relatively tame nightlife in the area(partially due to everything being wiped out more than a year ago). After Samui and all the crazy/seedy/revolting "nightlife" there I think a nice deserted beach is exactly what I'm looking for.

anyhow I will post again very soon -
NICK

Quoting politte@fas.harvard.edu:
>>> Hi!> It looks like you're pretty far from the Indonesia quake, right?> Love,> Paul>>>