After negotiating the multiple labyrinthine stairways leading
from the false world of air conditioned chrome and glass modern travel, the noise,
and grunge of the street reality hits home — I am in a foreign city. I know roughly
where I am, and where I want to be, but getting there is made harder by the cacophonous
traffic, stifling heat, and humidity. The effect on the 60% of my body that is water
is to grab its passport and leave. It wants to be somewhere else … not in me.
After bumping into two other equally clueless farangs, a Cannuk and a Dutch,
we decided to pool resources, grab a taxi and strike out in search of lodgings,
street food, and most importantly, cold beer. We are dropped in the old section
of Bangkok, nestled within a bend of the sleepy Chao Phraya. It is a
bustling mix of local houses and shops, food stalls made of core-flute and
discarded tautliner material, held together with rope, bungee, MacGuyver-esque skill, and a
modicum of good luck.
They jostle for pavement space with tourist stalls
cascading with cheap fake consumer goods. These are randomly interspersed with
vegetarian hippie restaurants, deep trance beer barns, and a wide variety of
accommodation pitched at the budget conscious traveller.
Under these trying conditions, finding a bed for the
night can be a daunting proposition. This, of course is not helped by my
already peaking stress levels, induced by leaving a large proportion of my
luggage behind at the ATM in the Airport. Discovering this more than minor
oversight just after you have negotiated escalators, travelators and security
gates, and are about to board the train into town, is enough to break the most
travel hardened road warrior into an asthma wheezing, incoherent mess.
Therefore, I parked myself in the shade with my
recently reacquainted luggage, and left the task of securing accommodation to
my much less encumbered travelling companion.
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