Travelling Teacher!: Reflections on my first week

***This Post is Incomplete due to computer issues... check back in a few days for more pictures!***
Thailand is wonderful. despite the difficulties of my first week I am very glad that I came and am enjoying myself immensely. As of yet I've done very few "touristy" things. For the most part I've been staying close to familiar territory and simply meeting people and taking in the culture. My first neighborhood in Thailand, Khao San Road, is very accommodating. It is essentially the hotbed of tourism in Bangkok. Home to guest houses, overpriced restaurants, and 1,001 tailors. Interestingly enough, it also shares the turf with Bangkok's Indian neighborhood, although it is not nearly as concentrated and noticeable as the various American chinatowns.
Almost all of the signs are in English and Thai and street food is delicious, plentiful, and available 'round the clock. My first home, "the green house" is guest house that caters mainly to Israelis although it's prices and amenities make it popular among visitors from all nations. It's internet access allowed me to use Skype to make calls to the US as well as upload pictures to my blog. The only thing it lacked was a laundry service which I was able to find in short order for relatively cheap.
My crazy sleep schedule had me wandering Khao San at all hours of the night, which was nice, being able to see it at all 24 hours without staying out all night. It's noticeably seedier around 4 and 5 am, with propositions changing from "massages" to more direct and persistent offers....
The seediest I've gotten in here is walking through the neighborhood where the go-go bars are located, which is quite harrowing. I had met an Australian and we walked through in all of about 1 minute, as each door had a band of merry men outside trying to get you to go in. Some even went so far as to grab and pull... needless to say I didn't go in and I haven't been near them since.
I did find a respectable massage parlor. Upon going upstairs my masseuse was so small I felt like I would be disappointed. Instead, I was in pain for about an hour. People have called Thai massage "passive yoga." I would akin it more to getting the snot beaten out of you by a professional wrestler in slow motion... for an hour. I can't really complain though, afterwards I felt like a million bucks and ended up going back the next day (at $7.50 an hour, who wouldn't?).
My final observation in Bangkok (at least for now) is that the taxi's are actually cheaper than the tuk tuk's, which is outrageous. The taxi's are on a meter, and the tuk tuks get to negotiate a price. For a fair that was 90 baht in rush hour traffic in a taxi (most of which is spent at a stand sill) I could not find a tuk tuk to take me for less than 200! They are so used to tourists over paying them that they simply refuse to go any lower. I had one accept an offer of 40 baht, only to say that I had to go with him to an emporium on the way... I got out of the tuk tuk.
Yesterday, I left Bangkok for a smaller, less polluted, more historical setting: Ayutthaya. It took about an hour and a half by bus to be free of Bangkok's sprawl, and I still don't feel quite free from the pollution.
Ayutthaya is beautiful, and the ruins are very impressive. I spent today walking around Ayutthaya historical park and soaking in the old capital of the kingdom of Thailand. The ruins are much less preserved than I would have expected after only being abandoned for a few hundred years, although war certainly had it's toll on the capital. (Thai museums and monuments tend to lack the descriptive plaques found in the west... so I'm not exactly sure of the historical details of each building)