Arrival in BKK

I had arrived in Bangkok, but not without my first adventure!

My flights went smoothly and the seat next to me was open on both so I had plenty of room to relax and nap. I met a nice man from NYC who is moving to Chiang Mai. He gave me some good tips and we are planning on meeting up when I get there in a week or so. Customs was easy, they didn’t even ask me about where I was staying or my return flight.

After politely declining several taxi drivers inside the terminal, I headed out to the real taxi stand. I gave them the address of the hostel, they didn’t speak English, and I could tell they didn’t know where it was. After a little while they figured out it was near Khao San Road and sent me on my way with the taxi driver. He spoke very little English but asked me where I was from. After I said Colorado, he whips out his thai CD and puts in (what must be) his Colorado CD. I listened to Rocky Mountain High and Afternoon Delight on the way downtown.

Khao San Road is a popular backpacker destination and the road is full of street vendors at all times. You can’t drive down the street after 5 pm and the taxi driver insisted that my hostel was on Khao San Road (it wasn’t and I knew this…but language barriers are hard). Because the road was closed, he just dropped me at the end of it. Cue beginning of adventure. I get out and start wandering Khao San…taking it all in. There are more random street meats than any girl could ask for, drunk Australians on gap year, the most gorgeous thai women I’ve ever seen (lady boys perhaps?) and hookah everywhere. I stop in a hotel to ask for directions and they have no idea where it is. Great. I walk a little further and pop into a wifi cafe, search for my hostel, and figure out I’m about 10 minutes away. I head out and towards my hostel and the further away from Khao San I get, the darker and seedier it gets. I find my road and turn down, there are homeless people sleeping in the middle of the street. I carry on and find the sign for my hostel and instead of a door there is an elevator. An elevator. At ground level.

Anyways the hostel is actually decently nice. The common areas aren’t air conditioned but my cabin area is. I’m in probably a 12 person cabin room with individual wood cabins for each person - all of my stuff stays with me at night instead of in a locker which I really like.

I haven’t quite figured out how to use tumblr mobile to embed pictures so I will just add them as another post.

Random note - the billboards here are insanely large. Put 6 of our billboards together and you get one of theirs.