Bangkok is like New York City

Only everything is 1/3 the price and the service is more polite!

Just like in New York, I have reconnected with old friends and made new ones.

I reconnected with my nursery school best friend, Lita, who I hadn't seen in 20 years,

Caught up with Joe (my Cambodia buddy!) to see Bangkok's Big Buddha,

And saw Lindsay Katona and her Dad, who stopped by their Aunt's house on their way to Vietnam!

There are some differences between NYC and BKK.  First, people do eat bugs, and not just poor people on the street.

(hard to tell all of the varieties but they include worms, grasshoppers, cockroaches, ant queens wrapped in betel leaves, and the grand delicacy, scorpions)

(Thai friend choosing to eat grasshoppers from hundreds of options at our hotel buffet)

Secondly, Thailand also is full of delicious exotic fruits, such as the durian (smells like ammonia):

Mangosteen (very sweet, like how I imagine the elixir of the greek gods to be):

And these "shampoo" fruits that look like red peppers but taste like a crunchy apple:

One Thai girl told me she was "bored in America because the only fruit to eat was bananas."

The Thai people eat all day and night, on the way to the gym, on the way back from dinner, and are as slim as can be.  

Thirdly, there are funny photos to be found, like this one in the bathroom stall.  The top right picture reads "no drinking water from the toilet canteen" and the bottom left picture reads "no washing vegetables in the toilet basin."

Aside from taking pictures of cool fruits and funny signs, I have been very busy going to seminars on Anti-trust law in the ASEAN community (Association of Southeast Asian Nations, scheduled to become an economic unit like the EU in 2015), and children in the Thai justice system.  This latter seminar was all in Thai, so my friend Tang translated for me.  It reminded me how we take language, and being literate, for granted.  Unless Tang wanted to translate for me, I had absolutely no clue what the panel was talking about.  Ironically, one major reform they were addressing was having adequate translation services available for children, because so often when foreign children are trafficked to Thailand they do not speak the language and are lost and helpless.

In addition to these two seminars, I have found my new desk at the Department of Special Investigation's Anti-Human trafficking bureau:

It is just me and the Thais!  It is cool to see the side of Thailand that does recognize the human trafficking problem and is working to end it, especially as some NGOs and the United States is critical of the Thai government (Thailand is still on Tier 2 "Watch List" of the annual U.S. Trafficking-in-Persons's report, one step away from Tier 3 countries, which receive sanctions.).

I go to a weekly prayer group where we pray for the prostitutes and the NGOs who are working with them.  We meet at Antique Cafe, one of the only NGOs who focuses on Lady Boys by offering those who want to get out of the sex industry employment at their coffee shop.

This morning, I visited NightLight, a jewelry business with the mission to help women, children, and lady boys find their ways from the go-go bars and streets to another life.  

                                      

Check out their beautiful jewelry, hand-made by the women (I saw about 25 women today, all previously prostitutes, working hard in their workshop to make this jewelry).  They are exclusively for profit so need to sell their jewelry to keep helping out the women.

Buy a piece and feel good about yourself HERE! 

And finally, my host family leaves today for America for weddings galore - I won't see them again but I will be "taking care of" their lovely apartment in Bangkok!  I will have only Pig (the snake) for company...