Smells like tien spirit

I've been in this country 32 hours and already I'm like yeah what, I have my own metro card. 

It was three bucks well spent. On day 2 I hopped on and off the sky train all over the city (see below for mistakes made on day 1). The Bangkok sky train is a neat little system. 

If you look at the map, you can see that Siam Square is the central station, and stations emerging from that one are numbered and lettered according to cardinal direction. "n1" is the first stop north of central; "e3" is the third easterly stop. Add to that that the whole thing is elevated and gives a nice view of the city. 

When you ask for directions to a subway stop in Bangkok and they tell you to change trains at stop X, dooooo itttttt. Don't get out at stop X and "just walk" to your destination from there. That is going to be one long-ass walk, and you are going to find out what bangkok smells like. 

I gave some thought to putting this post on the Internet. Bear in mind that I used to live in Central America so please consider the following paragraph not as complaint but merely as description.

The traffic congestion is so severe that your eyes and nose will just sting the whole time. At least 15% of the people I pass are wearing surgical face masks, a habit I considered adopting because it might conceal the fact that I'm not Asian. 

Now, the smell of Bangkok is: imagine you're walking along with your nose all stinging and someone puts a plate of food in front of you and says, "smell this, did it go bad?" (You may ask why anyone would ever do that. My sisters have done it to me and I have no answers.)

 So you're smelling it and you're like "is there fish in this?" and the person who gave it to you is like "I don't think so. There was a banana..." and you keep deliberating and finally just at the moment when you decide it has gone bad (there's always a moment when you know for sure. This is that moment, and by the way there WAS fish in there, also the banana), you get a giant whiff OUT OF NOWHERE of something that can only be sewage. Raw sewage, right in the middle of an otherwise civilized discussion of how the fish is holding up.

That, and sticky rice, is what walking in Bangkok smells like and remember that I'm not criticizing. I'm just describing.

I would soon discover that this doesn't compare at all to the Cambodian border at Poi pet, which smells like omelets and dental work.