I love waking up in strange new places. I rustled awake around 3am this morning to the sound of thumping bass from the clubs outside, a light pattering of rain, and the murmur of six-or-so British girls moving into my hostel room. It took a few moments to remember that I was in fact, no longer in central Virginia. I woke again at 8am, headed downstairs to the cafe for some mango and a cappuccino, and here I am.
My first day in Bangkok was somewhat unbelievable. My hostel is exactly what you get when you only spend $7/night, a six-bunk dorm room with water puddling in the hallways and dripping from the ceilings from the bad piping and the showers that are really just hoses in the bathrooms. There's a cafe below the rooms which I've been using as a home base to relax, read, and write, although the menu is all Indian food, unfortunately.
After I finished writing my last post, I packed my bag and just wandered around Khao San Road and its outlying neighborhoods all day. I walked until I could no longer see white people. I was approached by countless number of tuk-tuk drivers trying to sell me tours around the city (which is a scam) and one who was absolutely adamant about selling me "massage and boom boom". I saw people of all different nationalities and varying degrees of hippies and bros. I saw people with families, couples, locals, musicians, photographers, expats, people seeking enlightenment, people seeking vice. It's the most diversity I've ever seen in one place. I breathed in the complex palate of smells, the foreign spices, the earthy scent of the alleyways, the cigarette smoke and sweat and flowers.
I ate two of the best meals I've ever had in my life. I wanted to find a gritty local place for my first meal in Bangkok and steered clear of the restaurants and bars crowded with backpackers. I found a place off a narrow side street with an open porch overlooking a street teeming with motorbikes and delivery trucks. The woman spoke very little English but the menu only had four items, so I pointed at one and she brought me this:
It cost a little over a dollar (including the beer) and it was better than any Thai food I've ever had in America.
I wandered some more after that, found my way to a wat near my hostel and attempted to meditate for a while under the shadow of two very beautiful golden Buddha statues.
Evening fell quickly, I had some of the best pad thai of my life, and headed to the hostel for a quick nap where I met Youngblood, unpacking his bags in the dorm. Youngblood was so named by his backpacker friends because he was only 18 (unfortunately I didn't catch his actual name). He was a British student at the tail end of a gap year before University and was doing the same thing I was, backpacking solo with friends meeting along the way. He had been motorbiking his way from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi before he got sick and had to swing back up to London for a while, but was now back on the trails. We chatted for a bit and grabbed a few beers on Khao San Road, but by the end of the night the jet lag was beginning to take its toll and I was in a deep haze. We stopped back at the hostel for Youngblood to exchange some Vietnamese dong around 9:30 and unfortunately, I sat down on my bunk and fell immediately asleep.
Today I think we're planning on finding our way to the Bangkok zoo and possibly walking through China Town to eat some crab curry. I leave for Chiang Mai tomorrow afternoon on an overnight train for a whole new set of adventures, but I hope to get at least a glimpse of Bangkok during my brief stay.
I've only been here for a day, but this is likely going to be the coolest thing I've ever done and I have zero regrets.
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