Thailandia

GETTING LOST IN THAILAND

BANGKOK

Crap. Where’s Renae? This is ridiculous, this is the first airport I’ve landed at that doesn’t have wifi.  I knew I should have taken a screen shot of her itinerary, I’m pretty sure I land a couple of hours ahead of her. Damnit…  (these were the thoughts running through my head as I walked through the airport that I had landed into.  After about 25 minutes I realized I was in a completely different airport than Renae so I took the shuttle over to her airport as she would be landing. All the while praying she hadn’t already left.  No problem there.  I found a couple of flights coming from Taipei, (where I though she was flying in from) and waited on our agreed place to meet.  And waited. And waited. And walked around and waited. Eventually I found an internet kiosk and discovered that her flight was actually from China and she was supposed to have landed 45 minutes prior so I ran back to our meeting place and waited some more.  A total of about 4 hours passed at which point I had already confirmed with the airlines that she was on that flight, before I started looking for a police/security post because I was starting to get worried.  As I was walking by our original meeting place I see Renae sitting there like she’s been waiting for hours (she had) Turns out she had been waiting on the other side of immigration by exit C, which would have worked out nicely if I had arrived in this airport, but since I hadn’t I was about 100’ away sitting on the outside of immigration by exit C.  We had sat on opposite sides of the barrier for a couple hours, maybe more.  Awesome.

            Alright well once we had figured ourselves out a little bit we set off in search of our hostel.  Everything was smooth and we checked in and began making friends with the guests, exchanging information on what we should see, go and do in Bangkok.

The next day we headed to the infamous Koh San Rd.    After some confusion regarding the water taxis, we arrived and enjoyed some brews and food as we took in the sights. It’s easy to see why Thailand is the world’s backpacking mecca, there’s travellers abosolutely everywhere.  There stuff to do, taste, view, feel, and hear.  Eventually we got roped into some tourist trap/scam of going around in a ridiculously cheap tuk tuk tour which stopped at a couple of interesting places before they began trying to sell you custom tailored suits.  Well I fought off the first try but the second I fell for and now have a nice suit waiting for me in Bangkok to pick up when it’s time to head back the US.  Lol we’ll see what $150 usd will get me, I did go back the next day and it was sizing up rather nice I’ll have to admit. It’s hard not to laugh, but whatever.

            Haha the way back that night trying to get back to our hostel was a bit of a mess.  We tried to jump on a water taxi like we had done the morning, except we jumped on one going farther upriver enstead of downriver. Realizing our mistake we got off at the next stop and waited 20 minutes until we jumped on another boat.  This one went well for a while until it proceeded to break down. Great! Now we were closer to home, but on the wrong side of the river and stuck at a point.  Well these massive 70’ water taxis have 3 crewmembers. A captain, and his first mate who controls the docking and passenger movements, and then a ticket checker.  As the captain and first mate were trying to secure the boat as best they could, the river current started pushing the boat so that it was going to hit a restaurant.  The Rapid fire thai between the captain, first mate, and ticket checker ( a small woman  ) was confusing the hell out of everyone on board.  Simplified story, I broke the bewilderment of our water taxi passengers and jumped out to help the small crew. Lucky thing too, because they were gonna lose and the boat was going to get damaged as well as the restaurant.  About 10 other guys followed suit and joined in on securing the boat back to the dock. Everyone was saved and 20 minutes later a boat came by and took the broken down boat away leaving all of us standing on the dock.  Shit.  Haha another 20 minutes and then we were taken aboard another water taxi. Needless to say it was an adventure getting back home.

            Once we got back to the hostel, good spirits and good beer greeted us at the entrance.  We headed out with everyone to a crazy karaoke bar and had a great time.

            I think Renae was in a surreal state up until the next day as if it hadn’t registered she was in Thailand.  We went back to Koh San Rd the next day and we’re walking around exploring when she exclaims “We’re in ******* Thailand!”  I looked at her and smiled “Yep!” haha it did feel good to be here. So we celebrated and made sure it was real by eating weird bugs and scorpions and other delicious food.  Too bad this realization came a little late as we were heading out the next morning at 5 am to Cambodia.  Or so we thought

            Just like the night before we got back to our hostel intending to get some early nights rest but were swayed to go out with group of people from the hostel. It was a blast. But we didn’t stand a chance against a 5 am train. Lol luckily there was a 1pm train so we hopped on that one and head to Siem Reap. See Pics.