Places:

Thailand

Note: I intend to expand/reorganize this section. A couple pictures will be included.

To be blunt, Thailand pales in comparison to Vietnam. It's more expensive, more crowded, more polluted, and feels more dangerous.

Mind you, I say this because my friend & I visited Thailand AFTER seeing Vietnam -- I'm sure that if I'd never seen Vietnam I'd be raving about how great Thailand is. I am, however, glad that I saw Wat Po & Wat Pra Keo -- they were probably worth the trip. But, if you have to choose between Vietnam & Thailand, I say choose Vietnam.

• The cabs at the airport were strangely regimented; probably due to an official desire to clamp down on ripoffs. When getting a cab, you first state your destination to a person in a booth -- they give you a two-part receipt, and direct you to a cab. The cabdriver takes half of the receipt, and you keep the other half.
• Bangkok has a surprising density of 7-Eleven stores, especially in Banglampoo and around Khao San road (actually, that's probably not surprising).
• We ended up staying in the Royal Hotel, after getting fed up with the bugs in our first hotel. The Royal was insanely expensive (by Thai standards), but what the heck.
• If you're interested in an "authentic" Thai experience, stay the hell away from Bangkok.
• Khao San road is wall-to-wall street vendors, but we found their prices to be unreasonable when compared to Saigon (that may not be a fair comparison). nterestingly, the Thai pirate-music vendors were behind the times when compared to the Vietnamese -- the Thais were still selling mostly cassette tapes, whereas the Vietnamese were selling high-quality CD copies that even tried to look legitimate.
• There are some nice restaurants in the alleys towards the river, away from Khao San.
• The Thais take their monarchy seriously, so don't make any jokes about the King. Actually, their King seems like a pretty good guy, and he's even written some jazz pieces.
• I didn't visit the shady parts of Bangkok, but my cab had numerous "brochures" describing various establishments in that part of the city, so when in doubt, check out the brochures in a cab or two.