Taylor
walked into the room before me and told Jared that my flight had been canceled.
He said I was still in Chicago and didn't know if I was coming anymore.
"Yeah,
that's why I hear him," he said.
I walked
in and Jared grappled me onto his bed
with a moist-Bangkok-man-hug. If that sounded sexual, its because it was. This
had just turned into an aggressive hug sesh in a bunk bed and it felt great. We
all hadn't seen each other for months now and with everything involved-- the
waiting for my semester to finish, getting my ticket, my passport, them
traveling and experiencing and working in Australia and meeting people --to not
have to talk about planning and the " I cant wait till's" with them
for a second and finally talk about what we were going to see today instead… I
could feel it in my neck. Like a massage. Like natural Fexeril. Its funny how
friendship can do that. How it can just wrap me up in its arms and make me feel
okay for a second. Even if its just for a second, those hugs are what generally
reassure me I'm loved. I don't tell myself it enough to remember some times and
Jared's sweaty hug was a beautiful reminder.
He let
go of me and they got me up to speed. They gave me a short debriefing and told
me we were switching rooms and that I had to pay x amount and so on. Quickly
shit got real and I had to start moving again. It wasn't long before I was
running up and down flights of stairs with money and key cards, talking about
bracelets and packing up and unpacking. I was beginning to realize that travel
was going to involve a lot of spurts. Short (or long) sprints between A and B
and back to A to C type situations. Because so far I went from a train, to a
plane, to another plane, to a taxi, to a hostel, to a room to another room to
the bathroom. To the door, to a tuk tuk, to a market to eat which let me sit
and finally get settled into Thailand a little. But I knew eventually I'd have
to go back to sprinting. Back to the tuk tuk, back to the room, pack, move.
Repeat.
They got
their shit together, went to the front desk to switch rooms and grab the keys,
walked back up the stairs to unpack in our new dorm and after another hour, we
finally got to the Thai food hunt.
The
street food and environment in Bangkok is super interesting. The smell from the
airport that I noticed initially, that was certainly worse. However, the food
all looked delicious. The bootleg movies all seemed legit to a percentage
quality (" is this 80 percent or 90 ?") and the massage parlors full
of half dressed women or half dressed women who used to be men-- those were
very real. Not just Hollywood folklore, that shit was real as fuck. Yelling "sawatdee kaaaaaaaaa" as
you walk by. It was a lot to take in.
After about the second day, I realized I was ridiculously
sick. What I thought was random allergies was quickly turning into a bed-ridden
bacterial infection of some wicked Thai origin. It was bad. I was coughing shit
up and breaking out in a plague rash, clearly brought on by the Bangkok
sewage-car-exhaust air. It definitely added that extra umph to
the food. I stayed in the hostel for those next couple days, to recoup and try
to breathe. But I was in Thailand for the first time, trying to see things
outside of the concrete walls and ceiling of my room. Half dead or not, I was
going to put on my tourist pants and go see shit. We decided to go check out a
river boat tour that took us to a touristy temple. It was interestingly
disappointing because the monks had Samsung Galaxies and there was people in
costumes taking pictures with people for money and 100,000 other people looking
at everything else I wanted to look at. It felt sacrilegious and lame.
I woke
up the next morning and saw my infection wasn't fixing itself so I made the
choice to
do the only sensible
thing a sick westerner would do and took myself to the hospital.
Because that made sense. Bangkoks pretty western. I was sure this was a good
choice.
I found a tuk tuk… scratch that, the tuk tuk found ME and he convinced
me to go to the Bangkok Christian Hospital. It might have seemed like it would
be comforting to my overt Americanism, with my flip flops and my head phones and lack of skin color-- but it wasn't. God and me got some
beef, so if at any point there was going to be a bible involved, I was leaving.
I got to
the hospital after being dropped at the tuk tuks sponsor . Apparently, tuk tuk
drivers get gas money from business owners for redirecting tourists to their
tailor shops. The shop will tell you that you have to buy something; a shirt or
a tie. But the tuk tuk gets a stamp on his card regardless. It's a win win; go
act like you know about cloth for 3 minutes, find a way to say "oh I'm not
buying anything" and then get a 100 baht ride down to 20 and this guy gets
some gas tomorrow. Whatever. I didn't care. I knew I'd have to pay a couple
thousand Baht for my hospital visit so saved money was good money.
The
Bangkok Christian Hospital is an ant farm. I swear. It's just people rushing
around and phones ringing and the constant flow of sickly Thais cover their faces going in and out of the
waiting rooms. It was a little over whelming. I approached the reception desk and tried my hardest to describe
what was happening. The lady handed me a slip of paper work to fill out and
promptly sent me up to the fourth floor to see
a dermatologist. After an hour in a hallway watching televised Muay Thai, the doctor told me I had rosacea , which was super inaccurate.
Then he sent me down to the first floor to see a lady who told me I need 5
medications-- who sent me to a pharmacy across the hall and back outside. $65 and an hour and a
half later , I was out the door and back at my hostel.
After
the whole ordeal, every little bit of what they gave me made me worse. Way
worse. That shit made me drowsy with a sour taste on my teeth and I had
horrifyingly vivid dreams of my dog being shot in front of me. It was fucking
uncool.
I
decided to take the meds hoping they would have some miraculous, super-duper
Asian healing power. Like a medical Pokeball and went about my time. Taylor and
Jared, I noticed, had a knack for partying most nights which left me sick and
lame in the hostel room. There was wifi, which was nice, so I just popped
looney pills and watched bits and pieces of streamed movies between buffering
on a shitty connection. Can't say it was fun, but being sick just isn't…
In
summary, I will say this about Bangkok: if you like big-sprawl cities, have an
iron stomach and a impervious immune system-- this place will probably float
your boat. It has food everywhere, people everywhere, anything western and
American and backwards like steak restaurants and Subway next to massage parlor and trannys . However, if that's
not your cup of tea, I would recommend a very short stay. It's filled with
tourists, 7-11s, heckling little women who insist on you watching a Ping pong
show at Pink Pussies down Khao San Road, men who follow you with literal sex
menus-- promising "bang-bang" and "happy ending" and "something-something". Patience
and tolerance is a key here, or else you'll find yourself exploring on you own
one day, thinking about life and it's beauties and how you're half way across
the world, all the while getting bombarded with relentless sales men for sex,
tuk tuk rides, and more sex. They will follow you. They will follow you for a
while. And no amount of no-thank-you's gets them to stop. Neither will "fuck
off" or any sort of vulgarity. Despite being gratifying, it still doesn’t
shake the fly-to-shit mentality these sales men employ here.
On top
of that all, the fucking smell is not okay. I picture that's how the mens rooms in hell smells.
But seeing as their sewers are out in the streets, along with stray animals and
human shit-- literally, one night, Taylor and I went for a walk and he had to
tell me to watch out for a dead rat, followed by a cockroach and last was human
poop. With all this going on, the aroma unfortunately makes total sense.
On a Tim
scale of "places to see", I give Bangkok a 6.6 for originality. The
loss of points is for the other shit. All the other shit. Blah.
