western food & western restaurants

I could successfully (or sadly) say that I’ve had western food all day today, which I know is extremely horrible seeing that I live in Thailand and Thai food is, well, amazing.

For breakfast, I had muesli with fruit and yogurt. For lunch, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And for dinner, I had a grilled cheese and ham sandwich (without the ham) and french fries.

While most people still view Bangkok as this exotic place with a rich culture that is very different from the west, in many ways its not. Just my day’s of food alone is proof that it is extremely easy to say very western in this Southeast Asian country.

This leads me to think that maybe that’s why there are so many foreigners who love Thailand so much. They come here with the initial intentions of experiencing something new and they do. Then they start to miss home. Then they start to just make Thailand like what they were trying to escape in the first place.

It’s really a vicious cycle, as is everything else in this world.

I guess that’s how Thailand began to have such large western pockets in Bangkok with all the great restaurants, movie theatres, shopping centers, etc… and what’s best is that it’s cheaper. It becomes like living in the west, but cheaper.

I was talking to Kevin about how living in Bangkok has actually probably raised my standard of living. Not in the economical sense, but in all the comforts. I guess it all balances out with all the other experiences that I’ve encountered traveling to other places like China, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia where I had to “rough it out” a little more.

But all in all. It’s going to suck to go back to states and spend way too much money on clothes that isn’t hand sewn, fresh and organic fruit, homemade yogurt, etc. etc.