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.
