bangkok bits

4–11 6:58 am
slept like ten hours on that night train. i’m as well rested as a man can be. gently rocked all night like a baby.

4–11 10:41 am
the trains are made for your success. follow the arrows. checked into the hostel by 9:30. found a ferry ticket online. train to ferry pickup.

4–11 11:08 am
take advice. a british girl who lived in thailand for a while told me on the slow boat from laos that the ferry is the best way to explore bangkok.

4–11 2:22 pm
three shots of espresso near the royal palace. sitting inside the AC to recharge. the caffeine gives me something akin to hope, when such a thing is low.

4–11 4:04 pm
at once enthralled by wat arun and deflated. hundreds of tourists dressed in traditional thai clothes doing their best to get the perfect photoshoot. it reeks of desperation. something foreign to all the lessons described throughout the compound. but god damn it’s beautiful here.

note from your guide. this break requires an explanation.*
when i said it was one of the busiest weekends in one of the busiest cities in the world what i meant was the celebration of songkran, the thai new year. i had been told in the north that it was quite worth seeing. i made some plans to meet up with a few dudes i had met elsewhere. the hostel very well may always welcome people with a prize spinning wheel, but the city was very obviously already on the way by noon.

i thought in my head what would be funny is that i would walk around drinking all day and take notes in my phone. in the morning i’d be able to write a piece about all of the bizarre observations of the day. what i discounted was just how intensely they meant that it was a street water fight that never ended. i rarely found a chance to remove my phone from its water proof pouch. i also was spending considerable time laughing and shooting pool and hanging out with this motley collection. birds of a feather. 

so by 9pm i figured a fair estimate is that i’d had about sixteen ounces of water and something like four hundred of chang since 11am. walking around in the sun all day. my body was still wet but my insides felt like a dried out piece of beef jerky. and the only note i actually took time to take was this:

4–13 6:56 pm
are you just wearing underwear?
yeah i lost my swimming shorts. good look though eh?
you’re going to go to a bar like this?
where is the line drawn? call them short shorts.

4–11 4:15 pm
i would have thought the stops for the ferry would require more stopping. these people are efficient.

4–11 4:32 pm
60 baht for dinner in chinatown eat at the market for cheap. busses and hostels and beers and joints add up.

4–11 4:33 pm
that chinese lady serving food just blew her nose in her hand so i’m gonna go ahead and pick someone else. good luck to her though.

4–11 4:37 pm
the open sores on that mans leg were…somethjng

4–11 4:49 pm
ok 80 baht. paid extra to be a little further from the brake dust.

4–11 4:58 pm
carrot/stick. if i finish my taxes tonight i can smoke the joint i just picked up.

4–11 5:45 pm
feeling like a sardine on the train

4–11 5:54 pm
without knowing it only a handful of days ago, i seem to have came to one of the biggest cities in the world during one of its busiest weeks. of interest.

4–11 6:24 pm
i can see five 7-elevens from this walking overpass. how many are there in bangkok?

4–12 9:15 am
a group of over fifty bikers on a ride. that dude has a nice bug juicy dildo in his front basket.

4–12 11:35 am
long live the king on a screen on a skyscraper. ads for pizza on another.

4–12 11:39 am
walking next to the mall is maybe ten degrees cooler. the AC spilling out the doors and the shade of the food stands. fans.

4–12 11:45 am
there are waterguns for sale everywhere. how many waterguns are sold in bangkok this week. it must be hundreds of thousands.

4–12 11:48 am
my thoughts are frequently with the people having to work during this insane festival, because it’s something i know a thing or two about. being on the clock when your friends are out. scheduled on holidays. trying to sneak in new years. learning to treat tuesday as saturday so to have a weekend in kind. i’m so sweaty already. i left the hostel fifteen or twenty minutes ago.

4–12 12:15 pm
lumphini park is bigger than some towns. it has beautiful trees. a small lake. also, dinosaurs. little guys.

4–12 12:19 pm
monitor lizards. not to be confused with minotaur lizards.

4–12 12:24 pm
turns out there are nerds with fake swords in parks all over the world.

4–12 1:45 pm
different route back from the park. luxary apartments. too many of them. what do all these people do. this must not be a neighborhood for the people. no 7-elevens. not a one.

4–12 1:47 pm
literally the next corner. but a very sleek very clean one. god bless.

4–12 2:15 pm
little cartoonish stuffed animals hanging from purses are the norm. that girl takes hers seriously. they’re covered with a plastic jacket.

4–12 5:31 pm
i spent an embarrassing amount of time in a mall. but hey, when you only have a few articles of clothing you need the shorts you have to be functional. 80’s japanese music videos on the hostel common space tv while i apply for a visa to take me to next place.

4–12 8:02 pm
second night in a row on a dead end with the sri lanka gov website and i surrender. i want visa. they no give. start wandering around bangkok alleys. some dude with a headlamp fully engaged in a 3ftx3ft towel covered in moped components and my smart money is he’ll figure it out. had an ipa that did not taste much like one at the hostel. then came the surrender. two 7-elevens ago was a chang. the last one, standing in an alley only god knows how a 7-eleven rep would have known to pick for a location, was busy. and they had suntory cans for the same price as chang. the only other place i’ve ever seen these japanese seltzers are in icehouse, mpls. two alleys over a sign advertising panang and i am revitalized by the sight of it. the owner steps outside to tell me i can bring my can in. i say it’s alright i’ll finish it. he brings me a stool. have a seat.

4–12 8:04 pm
this crew doesn’t ask which it just brings big chang. 620 ml. and chilled glass. smitten.

4–12 8:16 pm
reading ali smith in the restaurant and thinking these stream of consciousness monologues of this character looking at the painting some centuries ago reads a lot like the bardo characters in saunders.

4–12 9:26 pm
traffic holdup on the narrow walkway because of a dude pushing a huge cart of trash. bless his heart.

4–12 9:28pm
these people are so much more efficient with space. alleys home to worlds.

4–12 9:59 pm
it’s called fuckin strategy. took another shower mainly to wash a shirt and some briefs. keep it simple. they have a good patio to dry stuff and there’s body wash in the showers. perfect opportunity don’t pass it up. i have very little clothes but i’m never too gross and this is why.

4–12 10:00 pm
scoping out the five star google weed shop thing strikes again. it’s never a great joint but it’s a free joint. (*a tremendous amount of weed shops will give you a free joint in return for a review. a way to find these are to find a spot on google maps that has heaps of five star reviews with almost no words.)

4–12 10:02 pm
the ipa was 70 baht at the shop the first chang was 39 the suntory was 42 the dinner with big chang was 240 the joint i grabbed on the walk home was 0 which means i am roughly 11.75 united states dollars in to a hell of a solo date night. and these alleys are not boring for the walker. also i am dehydrated as shit and have not had enough food today before that dinner so that little airheady initial part of the buzz came quick, and was welcomed.

4–12 10:04 pm
highlight of the day dinosaurs.

4–13 10:25 am
taking advantage of opportunities. three straight days of pull up/dip sets in the park with some bars. haven’t come across any of those in a while. load up on hostel breakfast pack as many calories in that bowl as i can so i only buy one meal tonight. oats with two packets of butter and a milo packet and milk and some corn flakes. then walk to the new hostel drop off the pack take the train to si lom road for new years celebrations with the german.

4–13 11:23 am
walk to other hostel. looks like that guy sitting in the shade is fashioning a shank. interesting.

4–13 11:30 am
these people walking around bagging discarded plastic bottles. how many do they need to collect to be able to eat a meal?

4–13 12:15 pm
“beeah can!” the receptionist cheered for me when i spun the wheel for a prize. then told me to take a chang instead of a singha. “it’s stronger. it seems like you want strong. because you were hoping beeah can.” and i’m on the board.

4–14 9:31 am
the streets are ghosted. shops almost all closed. a bizarre juxtaposition from the last couple days.

4–14 4:09 pm
there’s a feeling i’ve always thought takes a few weeks to get to and it’s the “yeah i’m actually gone” coming into you.

4–14 4:26 pm
“halloween, babe. they got the wrong day.”

4–14 5:26 pm
really workin to avoid the water fights

4–14 5:27 pm
i can tell that joint worked because i thought i went up five flights of stairs to get to the third floor.

4–14 5:31 pm
sometimes i listen to idles when i need to quit being a bitch about something. like i need to book a hostel for tomorrow night in colombo, sri lanka and i need to look at how i’ll get to that hostel around 11pm tomorrow when i get through border people.

4–14 6:31 pm
wat arun lit up as the sun sets from a mile away is somethin.

4–14 6:58 pm
sunset took precedent to booking this hostel but i’m glad that now i looked and realized the airport is a long ways from colombo. like 40 or so minutes in a car.

4–14 7:18 pm
my last night wandering of bangkok alleys

4:15 12:28 pm
should make a coffee table photobook titled “the 7-eleven guard dogs and cats of thailand”

4–15 1:43 pm
unfortunate that i’m hitting old bangkok on a holiday when so much is closed for a holiday. these buildings would be so nice to get inside. reminds me of old town phuket.

4–15 3:25 pm
masaman with roti for lunch at a cute little spot i stopped at yesterday for a coffee. lingered around the hostel for a bit. this airport is a ride from the middle of bangkok, and traffic gets bad for rush hour. went really early to avoid grab (uberish thing) being a lot more expensive in a couple hours. it’s raining in bangkok anyways. my time here is over.

4–15 3:28 pm
from last night’s rooftop sunset i could see wat arun lit up. a handful of temples and stupas poking out of the development. the bangkok horizon is difficult to comprehend. it goes forever. there are skyscrapers that appear to be in other worlds, but it’s still bangkok. this was an unfair nibble. i leave each place curious what it would have been like to do more. gotta leave a little meat on the bone i suppose.

4–16 6:03 pm
the last meal i bought in thailand was after a nice day of walking and going to a beautiful park. i had 60 baht left and didn’t want to keep the notes so i found this lady selling pad thai by a canal walkway and she boxed it up for me to bring to the airport. i have had a lot of kindness from sri lankans today but i already miss thai people.