Bangkok
Meh. I’m not too impressed with Bangkok, but then again, we haven’t given it too much effort so far. After enjoying yet another beautiful beach scene, Railay Beach this time, we took an 11-hour journey by water taxi, the bed of a pickup truck, and bus to Bangkok. Travel days are always a little stressful, but this was something else. We did meet two nice women in the bed of the pickup. They live in Barcelona and invited us to visit them. I guess we’re going to Barcelona now, too! The bus ride was overnight, and seemed to drag on forever. We didn’t sleep much, and only stopped once to stretch our legs. I was also awoken at 3am to a noise coming from the seat across from me, where we were storing some of our bags. I found a hand rummaging through our small bag of snacks. I followed the hand and arm to the floor of the bus where a man lay, covered in a blanket. He had been sneaking up the isle and sifting through goodies. This obviously startled me, and startled the creeper as well. Just as fast as I had woken up, the man shot backwards like a crayfish, down the stairs of the bus to the first level. I sat up and stared into the darkness of the isle wondering if all that had really happened. I was very groggy and my dry contacts weren’t helping my vision. Maybe my eyes had played a trick on me? Nope, I saw the man's face in shock as I caught him. We were equally surprised. There was also a lone blanket still bunched in the isle where he had fled down the stairs. I went through all our belongings and made sure nothing was missing. He hadn’t taken anything. It was also very strange that he had been digging through the snack bag, when my phone or laptop had been even closer to him. Maybe he was just hungry. Needless to say, we didn’t sleep much after that.
We finally arrived in Bangkok at 6:30am in the morning, and knew we couldn’t check into our hostel until 9 or so. I didn’t have any more data on my phone at the moment, so we opted to bite the bullet and get a cab instead of ordering a Grab. We gave the address to the hostel to our driver who said he would charge us 200 baht, which was more than we wanted, but we didn't know where the place was, where we were, and we really didn’t care because we were tired and hungry and pissed about Bus Gollum. It turned out that our hostel was only a half mile from the bus stop. We should have just walked. I did get the man to come down to 150 from 200 after the short ride. I guess that’s better than nothing. We had a few more hours until we could check in, so we found a McDonald’s and hung out with good WiFi and a clean bathrooms.
On our walk back from McDonald’s, a man approached us on the sidewalk and made friendly conversation. He could tell by our bags, and maybe the color of our skin, that we were tourists, and he started telling us all of the cool places we should go. He is a history teacher, so Leah bonded with him over teaching. He kept telling us that we would not be able to check in to our hostel/ hotel until 2pm because nobody was going to be open until 2 because it was a holiday, and then told us about the holiday and what places we should go to take advantage of free food. He was a very helpful, friendly man. At the end of all this, we said we needed to go back to our hostel and check in and drop our bags; we were tired. He again proclaimed we could not check in yet, but we told him we had special arrangements. He said he would give us a ride, and we declined. It was just then that it became evident that he wanted to be our Tuk Tuk driver for the day and take us to all the cool places he had told us about. He knew he’d lose our business if we got away and went to the hostel. When we told him no, he stomped off, yelling, “Fuck you! Fuck you! You stupid! Fuck you!”
So now we have Bus Gollum and Fuck You Tuk Tuk Man to start our Bangkok adventure. And we’re also still tired and very sweaty. Not a good combination. We finally got to the hostel, and checked into our dorm room after sitting patiently in the reception area for another hour. The room was also hot, as they only run AC from 8pm to 8am. We spent the day napping, trying to recover, and also think about what we wanted to do in Bangkok and what/when we wanted to do the next city. Thankfully hunger got us out of bed early in the afternoon. We walked aimlessly for a bit and learned the layout of the part of town we were in. And then it was time to lay down again!
About 4 months ago we hashed in NYC and met a couple there who live in Bangkok. We had been in contact and finally got to meet up with them. They took us to a night market for dinner and drinks and it was really great. We made our way through a sea of hundreds of colorful tents and found a place to sit and eat a couple of whole fish. It was a relaxing evening in Bangkok, which we weren't expecting, but needed badly.
The next morning we did some much needed laundry and got ourselves to the airport so we could fly to Chiang Mai. We’re going to Chiang Mai for one day, then bus to Chiang Rai for two days, then back to Chiang Mai for 11 days while we dog sit in exchange for free lodging. We’re very excited for that. We don’t feel like we got a good example of Bangkok in our one day there, so we plan to go back there and party hard and see the weird stuff before moving on to Cambodia. Stay tuned.
Tyler
