Thailand Part 1 - BAM! You’re welcome Bangkok.

Coming back to Korea after 8 days in Thailand has been difficult.  These past two days in the minus 15 degree weather/reeling off the high that is traveling to a foreign place and doing whatever you want, whenever you want, has left me dangling on the ledge of depression, questioning why I even liked it here in the first place.  I’m sure Korea will gain its light back, but right now the pictures and thoughts of Thailand are still in the forefront of my mind and all I can think about is getting back there. It was a truly amazing week and knowing that i’ll go back there as soon as possible will get me through these cold couple of months ahead.


My time in Bangkok was more like a stop off.  Our flight arrived at 5:45 and we got to Koh San Road at about 7pm.  This was after I told my good old buddy old pal, Saba, that we’d be there at 2:45 - I’m still sorry about that.   Once the 3 of us arrived (Steph, Karin and I) we threw our backpacks in our rooms and headed out to do some shopping.

...As it turns out i’m the worlds worst barterer.  If I were taking the easy way out, i’d blame the sizable Changs for my poor addition and subtraction skills, but i’m not gonna do that, it was completely and utterly my inability to undersell these Thai people.  Especially when they were continually calling me “friend” and telling me that they’d “give me good deal”.  I guess I believed that while I was sifting through the racks of sweat shop clothing, that they’d marked up 300%, we’d had some sort of connection and surely they weren’t gonna rip me off.  Saba stood back and watched this amateur American tourist hour a handful of times before he stepped in.  After I offered an honest looking Thai woman 1200 baht for 3 dresses priced at 350 Baht each, he put a stop to the slaughter and from that point on all negotiations were discussed with him first.  All in all, i’m sure Thailand economy is thankful for my visit to the vendors, as I did leave with a whole new wardrobe - a wardrobe that’s going to lie dormant in my Seoul apartment until the frost melts and the blistering heat returns.  None the less, it was fun.

It’s no surprise that Bangkok is a complete tourist trap -these people make a living of ripping off wide eyed fools like myself.  However I wasn’t expecting the in your face aggressive nature of it all.  The physical pushiness of Korean people is quite different from the verbal sort dealt with in Bangkok.  Saba had been there for a couple days already, thus knowing not to entertain their offers with even the slightest glance, but this proved to be another failure for me.

Whenever one of them would walk up and say “tuk tuk?” then whisper “ping pong show?” i’d always lose a bit of focus and look at them in what must have signified interest, because then once again Saba would have to step in and shoo them away.  I don’t know what kind of look I was giving these people, something tells me i’m not the typical ping pong show frequenter, so i’ll need to figure it out and correct that behavior before my next trip.  If I hadn’t been with someone else, along with paying a few Thai people’s mortgages, i’d also have the images of a ping pong show burned into my memory.

The next morning at 5am Saba and I headed to the airport to catch a flight to Surat Thani and then hop on a catamaran that would take us to Koh Phangan (also known as Heaven).

Tough time at the airport.

More to come.....