Bangkok
I got a ride fairly quickly from a salesman who spoke spotty English heading towards Bangkok. He dropped me off in the outskirts of the city, still fairly far from where I was headed and now very much city streets that are difficult to hitchhike on, mostly because there’s nowhere for cars to pull over and no places for me to stand and make myself known. On top of that rain was fluctuating between light and heavy.
I kept walking anyhow for a good while getting decently wet along the way. Eventually I asked a woman if I could use her phone and made a quick phone call to Adam, the guy who would be hosting me in town. He gave me directions and I hopped some sort of sky train and did some more walking, eventually arriving at his apartment complex pretty wet and sweaty.
He was cleaned up and ready for a night out, some fancy place downtown was having an open bar. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since I started moving around, it’s that that there’s no night like one after a day on the road.
I showered quickly and he let me borrow a pair of his pants being that everything I had was wet, dirty or both. Shoes too, my sandals weren’t gonna fly in the place we were heading to. Once in the elevator light a stain or some such on my shirt caught his eye, back to the room quickly and now I was completely re outfitted, buzzing and ready for whatever the night would bring.
We were in a taxi and Adam told me his whole story, teaching here in Thailand and getting as many girls as he could in the meantime. Thirty one Thai girls and one Spanish he told me, since he’d been there. He had the numbering thing down, keeping track of this sort of thing his whole life, he even had a celebration with “99 and 100” which I think had gone down since being in Thailand. All together he had some good stories.
We hit the club and waited for a girl he knew to show up, she finally did and we all got in. We started pounding down rum and cokes as fast as they could make them until the hour was coming for the open bar to be a paid bar again. In the final minute we both went to different bartenders to order a round each to have a bit of a stockpile, then headed up to a table on the second level which wrapped around like a balcony looking down on the main dance floor.
It occurred to me that the place wasn’t that packed, Adam told me that everyone showed up later and could care less about the open bar, this was a place for people with plenty of money. Once up in the booth the Thai girl that had shown up was getting pretty touchy, stroking my leg in rhythm with whatever conversation was flowing, brushing my arm and so forth.
Our glasses finally emptied as the place started filling up. “So what we do”, Adam said, having been to this place before, “is go on down here in a bit and start talking to everyone. They all have tons of money and mostly just buy bottles. We make fast friends and they start sharing”.
We headed down and that’s all it took, talking to people in booths and in no time they were filling up our glasses. Table to table we went, roaming about, abandoned glasses going down the hatch just as quick as glasses being shared. Flirting here, dancing there, liquor going down like water easier and easier when it mattered the least. Blackout inevitable, memory of a taxi, getting into one, Adam smashed, the girl along with us not nearly as drunk, but still with a buzz of her own.
Next memory is being in the middle of the act with the girl back at the apartment, time travel with no complaints, mild confusion quickly dismissed. We finish and she’s already gathered her things and is out the door. Adam is passed out naked in his bedroom which I have to go through to get to the bathroom. An attempt is made at cooking noodles in a rubber bowl. Things are melting and soon that’s all I can do, into the couch awaiting a hazy glazed over morning.
Afternoon came instead of morning, awake and trying to recount the night, piecing things together with Adam best we could. Eventually a pretty local girl showed up, I took off to explore the neighborhood. Markets are always the best bet, I happily drank orange juice and ate spicy chicken as I roamed around enjoying the smells and the sounds.
Back at the apartment Adam and his lady friend were cooking up some dinner, it became an easy night lounging on the couch with a joint watching videos and talking, a little tamer than the night before.
The quick blast of Bangkok was all I needed, I had Chiang Mai on my mind and my time in Thailand was running low, I’d have to run up quick and get back down to Bangkok for a flight to Germany. The next day I’d start the process of getting out of the mega city by thumb and on to the next leg of this Thai adventure, good times ahead, always.
