Bye, Thailand.

I'm walking down Sukhumvit, one of the newest and swankier areas of Thailand. I'm on the sidewalk, underneath the sparkling and ultra-modern BTS Skytrain.

A man passes me on my left. With his baby ELEPHANT.

THIS is Thailand.

Modern, but not overly western. I realized this when a group of teenaged boys, in their school uniforms at night, came to me on Khao San road, the backpacker haven. They must have had a homework assignment to talk to people on English. One came up to me, giggling, with a list of phrases in his hand. "May I interview you?" he says in his heavily Thai-inflected English. One friend whipe out a cell phone, another a camera. He asks me one mundane question after the next, about why I came and if I like Thailand. I answered positively, all smiles, so that even though I knew none of them understood a word (I'm sure they were going to go home to transcribe and translate) I wanted to get my point across.: how thankful and appreciative I was of the Thai's generosity, kindness, and open arms.

As true as this was, I found myself to be less-than-impressed with Bangkok. I think it was because I was traveling alone, at the end of a very long vacation. It's known for it's nightclubs, and partying, and sex tourism. At this point of my journey, I wanted none of it.

I wanted to come home.

There is so much blatent sex tourism here that every time I saw a Western man with an Asian woman, I wanted to gag. I felt so sorry for the "bar girls," not because they were prostitutes per se, but because Western men travel across continents just to find them.

I mean, the concept of just enlisting the services of a prostitute or going to see strippers isn't SO awful to me, but the idea that people come across the planet for just that.... I was repulsed. As much as I would've been game to see a "ping-pong show" (use your imagination, mom), I felt that a woman going alone in a scene like this was just a bad fucking idea. It's so over the top, from the descriptions I've heard, that it's not even porn. It's ridiculous. Like a freak show.

It just seemed wrong.

I didn't even want to go out dancing or drinking, or anything of the sort. Not that anyone would've taken me for a Thai hooker, but I just wasn't feeling it.

I imagine that's the best part of Bangkok, and I shied away.

Next time. Which I'm sure there will be.

Asia is so much easier than I thought it would be, at least in the not-so-off-beaten-paths. All of the signs (the important ones) are in English. Everyone knows the phrase "how much?" and they're savy enough to communicate the answer, whether it's with the little calculator they carry around or by simply pulling out the bills in their own pockets to show you the cost.

I was so afraid. Of malaria, of dengue fever, of the humid weather, of the language barrier, of larger-than-life flying cockroaches (this was a biggie). I managed to avoid all of that. I realized about a week and one giant can of deep-woods-Off that I wasn't even getting bitten by mosquitoes. So by the time I got to Hua Hin, when I realized that I left my malaria pills in Bangkok, I wasn't even worried. Most people don't take them anyway.

I felt so safe, with the possible exception of Cambodia, where we made sure to have a driver everywhere. No one so much even gazed in my direction, except the moto guys. A great place to be a solo female traveler. People were either nice and helpful, or at their worst, indifferent.

I'll be back some day. But right now I'm just happy to not have to squat when I pee.