Chiang Mai tonight

We've spent two days in Bangkok and this place is pretty wild...definitely unlike anywhere I've ever been.  The only place even sort of comparable for me is San Jose, Costa Rica, and that's really not a good comparison at all.  The first day that we got here it took us over two hours to get to our hostel, as the language barrier was immediately obvious.  We couldn't explain to the cab driver where to go both because he didn't speak english and because we really didn't know where the heck we were going.  Our hostel was a really nice building, only about a month old, but it was in the cuts of a really interesting hood to say the least.  More on that later.  Yesterday we hung out with Kevin, an old friend from back home who goes to school out here at MUIC (international university)...we checked out his campus and some parts of 'real' thailand in the day, hung out at his restaurant/gas station/house (he lives at a restaurant/gas station that his mom owns--it's pretty sweet), and then went to check out the khao san road night scene which was awesome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaosan_Road).  More on that later too.  Today we had kind of a down day to rejuvenate for our next leg--woke up late and hung out at kevin's--and now we're off to the bus station to take a 12hour night bus to chiang mai for the songkran festival (thai new years)...I'll post more soon with pictures.