The First Hours

"What's this?" I hear you cry. "One week in Thailand already and no blog?"

Well, I have been entirely too confuddled, muddled, puzzled, dazed, and confused to utter anything other than a prehistoric "Ugg" for the best part of these past few days. To quote Coldplay:

Nobody said it was easy.
But nobody said it would be this hard.

Now that I have recovered a small part of my sanity, I will attempt to take you on a literal excursion through the events of the last 7 days.

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The flight, although it was comfortable enough, was unusually for me, a terribly anxious journey. The source of my unrest was not so much the turbulence (although there was a fair bit of that), or the lengthy duration, but instead, this panic that had been festering in my gut for days like the frightened flapping of a caged bird, and I had until now done a great job of holding it back. However, it was doomed to surface at some point, and surface it did, in these sickening waves that were my constant companion throughout the entire journey. I maintained a stiff upper lip though, (hitting yourself in the mouth tends to stiffen up the whole area nicely).

Bangkok wasn't what I expected, but then I am unsure what I expected to begin with. Possibly brighter Sahara style sun, beating down on streets full of chickens and people in hats shaped like fruit bowls. To my bemusement, Bangkok looksexactly like parts of any UK city centre, but with a leaden sky that presses down upon you like a hot soggy blanket. Of course, the faces, the signs, the images are all alien, but I was relieved to find out that Thailand is a left-hand-drive country, grasping as I was for the familar in the midst of so much that was unknown.

Smiling and nodding was the best policy I found, when attempting to respond to my driver's attempts to communicate. He would point energetically out of the window every now and again, and say "you loo, you loo", and I would scan the horizon to find his point of reference. Occasionally I would notice a beautifully architectured building in the far distance, but mostly I just saw endless palm trees, roadside stalls, and huge bill boards advertising things like "50 SPF, SKIN WHITENING CREAM, FOR WHITEST SKIN EVER!" This particular board had a beautiful pale Thai woman in close-up, beaming with her perfect oh so white smile. In comparison to the people I saw on the road sides and in surrounding vehicles (crammed into the back of pick-up trucks), there was nobody even close to being that pale. Hell, I don't think even I was that pale then, and I was the FNG* freshly off the plane! How strange that we aspire to be tanned in Britain, and pay good money for bottle tans, sunbeds, skin bronzer, you name it, and here they aspire for the exact opposite, and pay good money to achieve what we cast away with contempt.

But I digress. I arrived in the evening, about 6pm local time. The driver took me to my hotel, called "Jomtien Long Stay" (I later found out that it was referred to as the long stay penitentary by the diving interns), and I was left there to check in, suddenly alone, and very very hot. A Thai man assisted me with my luggage, and let me into a room on the 2nd floor. As we turned on the lights, it became immediately apparent that this was almost certainly not my room - there were articles of men's clothing strewn around and a tangled bed sheet lying on the floor. I raised an eyebrow at my porter, and he shrugged and back-tracked out of there with my case. Momentarily abandoning me in the corridor while he returned to reception for further instructions, I fanned myself with my passport, and wondered what the hell I had let myself in for. As if in answer to my prayer, the door opposite opened at that exact moment, and a tall blonde tanned muscular surf dude type bloke stepped out of his room wearing a towel. He didn't look very old, I guessed about 21.

"Ahh, hey there, you just arrived, yeah?"

I sagged with relief to find a capable-looking English speaker. I could tell from his accent that he was South African, and that fit pretty well into that whole traveller surf dude concept I had already invented for him. We chatted for a minute or 2, and I discovered that he was not only a neighbour, but also a fellow scuba intern with Mermaids. Over the next hour, I got into my (hot dirty dusty) room, flapped my arms at a cockroach (which Carl - the neighbour - dutifully removed), had a shower, unpacked some things, and accepted Carl's invitation to go out for a beer.

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(I will continue the story later, I am almost finished with my internet time!)