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Published: November 20th 2006
Is it a gas station, or is it a bar?
(Thanks to Mike Morgan for the picture.)After succesfully meeting my friend Kirra at the Suvarnabhumi Airport, we checked into our hotel and started enjoying the company of someone from home. After two nights of boredom and sickness in this ridiculously over-priced joint, we moved over to the Khao San Road and stayed in MyHouse Guest House. There we made new friends, ran into old ones, visited familiar haunts, and explored new places. At some point, we got onto completely different schedules and I was pretty much on my own... that's when I met Chelly.
List of Characters Nic Nakis. The mischievous vagabond and hero of our story.
Kirra Kingsley. Nic's former neighbor from Seattle. A very Nic-like character (but female), here to teach English to Thai grade-schoolers.
Sayan. The Thai hotel-worker who took a forlorn Nic into the hospitality of his home.
Mr. Tung. An agent for the placement company that put Kirra into her teaching job, a helpful individual and host of dinners.
Mike Morgan. Nic's British former travelling-companion. Getting older and balder, he quit his job to traipse around the world.
Manu LaPlante. A Frenchman, but a good guy nonetheless. He and Nic
Kirra and I in Bangkok
(Thanks to Mike Morgan for the picture.) had become acquanited during an earlier stay in Bangkok.
Damien the Aussie. The notorious Australian club-brawler, also resurfacing here in Bangkok.
Michael and Nina. A pair of twenty-somethings, from England and Germany respectively, here carrying on a secret love affair. Nina is ethnically Indonesian and flipping gorgeous, which gained her many admirers.
Chrissie and Elena. Two young German temptresses.
Chelly Perpetual Daia. The Kenyan tiger-tamer who rescued our hero from the jaws of despair.
Lidya Poni Kelembu. The other beautiful Kenyan tiger-tamer, who didn't speak as much English, but was along for the ride.
(There were also several million Thai people, some Canadians, many Israelis, a Greek guy, a handful of Australians, and a group of French guys, but they were essentially minor characters in my story.)
October 26th After much delay, Kirra emerged from the airline arrival gate with a ton of baggage. Sayan and I helped her load it all into the cab, then said our goodbyes. We were joined also by Mr. Tung, who accompanied us to the KT Guesthouse in north Bangkok. We had a little time to decompress there, checking emails and going for a swim.
Then Mr. Tung returned to pick us up for a dinner with some of Kirra's fellow teachers and the staff from the placement company. After dinner, Kirra and I met Mike Morgan near the Khao San road and went out for a night of copious bucket-drinking. We danced at the Immortal bar until they kicked us out, then Mike and I had our goodbyes. Sober Kirra became really angry over something around this point, but it'd be beyond me (or Mike) to figure out what it was.
October 27th I awoke with a killer hangover and bid farewell to Kirra as she went off to work for the first day. Aside from sleeping, I also spent some time eating, swimming, watching children's cartoons, and ranting in this blog. Kirra returned in the evening feeling quite ill, so we spent the rest of the night in our rooms. We ate dinner on the beds, listened to CDs, and chatted about life and love and ambition and all that stuff. I learned that Kirra and I are very similar people, but at totally different places in our lives. This helps explain why it can sometimes require a lot of
work for us to get along.
October 28th After seeing the bill for some of our expenses, we decided it would be prudent to check out. We moved around mid-day to the Khao San area, bumping into Mr. Tung and some other teachers on our way. Getting in to the MyHouse guesthouse, I saw Damien and Manu, who I had met several weeks before. We checked in and Kirra went wandering around the area while I sat to chat with Manu and his friend from Greece. In the evening-time, she turned in early and I went exploring. My explorations led me to a few new places, some of which were filled with new Thai friends, jovial from the whiskey and happy to share food and drinks with me. I also met a pair of pretty German girls and made some small talk. Later, I saw the German girls under the assault of some seemingly-unwanted attention from a pair of Australian guys and I attempted a rescue. Somewhere in there, Nina and Michael came along for awhile before heading off into the night together. This mission ended up keeping me out until dawn and securing me a date
with the girls the next day. Having stayed up this late, I got to meet the early risers: a couple of really interesting chicks from Victoria, B.C. I also helped a young Australian girl find a place to stay, and even though I can't remember her name, she came back into the story the next day as well.
October 29th I woke up midday and kicked around with Manu. After breakfast, I headed over to the Muay Thai gym with the Aussie girl along to take some pictures of me as I trained. She left early and went to hang out with Kirra. Nearing the end of the grueling workout, I remembered my date with the two young Frauleins and rushed back home for a shower. But, sadly, they ditched me. I gave them fifteen minutes and then took off to find dinner on my own and to have a good time without them. I ate my meal down a street that was completely new to me and did some people-watching. Exploring for awhile, I returned to MyHouse. There was a movie playing and I watched it while chatting with Michael and Nina and an Israeli dude
and a handful of French guys and the Australian girl, who were all drinking together. We came up with some great ideas, which I think I frantically typed up somewhere, and then we went out to party. We tried a couple of spots, but settled on Immortal bar, which I found completely dull. Telling everyone that I really needed to go find a girl to make-out with, I bounced and started wandering the streets alone. Amidst my wanderings, I stumbled on Chelly and Poni, and you know, all night dancing with Kenyan tiger-tamers in Bangkok...
October 30th I had breakfast with Chelly at MyHouse, where she got to meet Manu and the Australian girl (who was, for some unknown reason, totally rude and bitchy to Chelly from word one). Kirra had checked out in the morning, so I put my bag in Manu's room and we went out to wander and shop and see some sights. Plans changed quickly, though, and I ended up in a mad scramble to get my stuff and hastily move in with the African girls at a tiger zoo near Sriracha.
Additional Points of Interest Secret Troop Movements. Out
of fear that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin would be attempting a return to Bangkok in order to re-consolidate his wealth and power, the Thai army moved in thousands of troops during the last few days of October. The government was officially denying this, but we saw the evidence everywhere we went. There were armed guards outside of government buildings night and day, young men in olive drab shopping on their day off or reporting to base with two or three of them on the back of the same motorcycle, and camoflauge Hummers bristling with machine guns where there had been none before. I would have taken some pictures, but scowls and M-16s kind of intimidate me.
The Immortal Bar. Most of my nights out, this time around, saw me end up a bar called Immortal. The place was reputed to be one of Bangkok's only Heavy Metal bars. Being named after the legendary Norwegian Black Metal group, and having been decorated with flags and banners and posters of a variety of extreme metal groups, I expected more from the place. In fact, it was just another Khao San Road dance club, with a fruity Thai DJ playing hip-hop hits
from the U.S.A all night every night and a couple of burly, dreadlocked-and-tattooed bouncers there just for color. Don't get me wrong, I had fun there, but Immortal Bar? Sad, just sad...
"Nazis!" Thai people wear a lot of stupid t-shirts. I know they don't have much grasp of English--for the most part--but then they probably shouldn't wear so many shirts with English writing on them. The one that shocked me the most while wandering the Khao San Road (and it certainly shocked the French and Germans I was wandering with) was a black t-shirt with a huge white swastika on it that simply read, "Nazis!" The young Thai kid was sweeping up in front of a touristy restaurant and it appeared that neither he, his co-workers, his employers, the international clientele, or any of the many dozens of Israelis who walked by him seemed to give a damn. I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but I've also seen Nazi paraphenelia decorating the handbag of a tough-looking Thai "Tom" (the female version of a Ladyboy: a really butch chick), and I've seen a skinny Thai girl wearing a t-shirt with a huge neo-nazi symbol on
it that read, "Skinhead, White Power." W.T.F.?
Fried Bugs As The Next American Fast Food/Health Food Craze. There are a lot of street vendors around here selling fried insects by the handful. You can also find them at the night markets: deep-fried scorpions, grasshoppers, maggots, worms, cockroaches, beetles, and other creepy-crawlies. Michael and I figured this could become a great cultural export to America. All we'd need to do is find some scientific evidence that linked insect eating to positive health benefits. First we help kick-start the trend amongst world travelers and extreme sports enthusiasts, then it's just a matter of some well-placed press releases. We'd need to orchestrate it so the media reports about all these wild kids eating bugs coincide with the reports about how extremely healthy it is. Then we start a chain of small bug-bars and snack vendors in the U.S. There'd have to be some big promotions and a lot more press to get everyone to try them--but, come on, we're selling bugs as food, so people are gonna talk. Once folks have gotten over the fear and figured out that a jar of ants doesn't taste any different than a bag of
chips or handful of crackers, then it's smooth sailing. We simply start selling the rights to franchises all around the country and then we rake in the dough.
Study Help I didn't want to go so far into the CliffsNotes joke as to create a study quiz for you, but if you want to become a real expert on my journeys, I suggest you read the several other blogs that relate to this period in Bangkok ("The PJs", "Per Angusta, Ad Augusta", "Ranting, Raving", "The Greatest Internet Cafe in Southeast Asia", "International English", "Reeling", and "Kismet"). There
will be a test.
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