Travel seems to afford people with alot of time for navel-gazing. I am no different. In fact, when I left Bangkok, Thailand for Yangon, Myanmar (or Rangoon, Burma, dependent on whether you recognise the name changes), I actually made a point of leaving my laptop behind, and trying to pack as few distractions as possible so that I could engage in both some good and intense gazing into my navel, as well as remove anything I could put between myself and the locals - to draw them in and me out, so to speak.
Myanmar - a country with no ATMs, a military junta, random bombings and an impending anniversary of an uprising. I sure can pick my travel destinations, can't I?
Having never been to Venice, I would only be able to guess that it's the same kind of story there as it is here in Bangkok. At least, when it comes to the canals.
One of the most often overlooked forms of transport available in Bangkok, at least by tourists, is the Khlong Boat. Khlong, in Thai, means "canal", and in the same way as Venice relies on it's canals for the transport of people and goods throughout the city, so did Bangkok.