Sunday, October 10, 2010
On to another country. Wow. The fact that I was in Vietnam just this morning is hard to comprehend. I ate a quick breakfast at the hotel before they ordered me a taxi to the airport. As I was getting into the car, two American girls asked if we could share. I was more than happy to split the cost and we headed to the airport together. They’d been living in Thailand for six months and had a couple weeks in Vietnam before flying back to the States. It was a perfect opportunity for me to get some information about Thailand.
Once I checked in for my flight to Bangkok, I became excited about the fact that I was actually going to Thailand, and I willingly shared that excitement with the girls. When I finally got to the gate, I heard my name being called. David and Mai-Anh (from Sapa and Hue) were on the same flight. I didn’t even know they were going to Thailand, but apparently they have a friend who’s showing them around for a couple of days before they go back to Vietnam. So random.
Clearing Thai passport control was easy enough for me (David and Mai-Anh got stuck because they didn’t know their friend’s address) and my luggage eventually made its way onto the carrousel. I stopped by the information desk to double check my bus and the woman suggested that I take the new fast train (only opened for a month and one tenth the cost of the bus) into the city. There were very few Westerners on the train, but I ended up sitting next to a guy from Carlsbad who works in Thailand one month every two. Since he’s been to Bangkok a number of times, I figured he was a good person to stick with. However, when we changed to the skytrain, he went to the wrong platform. I looked at the map and realized we were headed the wrong direction and luckily I was able to convince him of this fact before we boarded the train. He was nice enough though to give me his extra train pass.
About an hour later, I got off the skytrain and found my way to the hostel, hoping that they still had rooms available. I’m staying in a six-bed female dorm in the women only section (meaning that we have our own shared bathroom, which happens to be incredibly nice, especially for a hostel). I spent some time talking to a couple of other girls on the floor before finally going out to find the Myanmar embassy. One disadvantage of the hostel is that it is not in the backpacker’s area near Khao San road. But it got such wonderful reviews on hostel world, and is extremely close to the Embassy of Myanmar, that I figured it was worth staying in the Silom part of Bangkok.
On my way to the Embassy, I stopped for lunch. There was a huge festival taking place at the temple across the street with lots of music and stalls selling flowers. In honor of the festival, the restaurant was only serving vegetable dishes. I couldn’t tell what any of the dishes were, but a woman came in who spoke English, and explained. She even got the owner to let me try a couple curries before picking one. The “a little bit of spice” curry that I ordered had my mouth on fire. I couldn’t drink enough water to try to tame the burning in my mouth. A couple men who sat down next to me noticed that I was struggling with my food. One tried to speak with me a bit, but the conversation was pretty limited. When I finished and asked for the bill, the man offered to pay for my food. I politely declined at first, but I don’t know the Thai etiquette (like in Russia where you would never refuse a drink) and when he insisted, I conceded.
After lunch, I continued down the street and found the embassy. For an embassy, the visa building looked really sketchy, just a locked door with a sign stating it was the Embassy of the Union of Myanmar visa office open from 9am (the key piece of information I needed). I took a different street back to the hostel but it didn’t end up being as direct as I anticipated. Luckily, I found my back but I did feel as though I was wandering in a desolate area.
I was sitting downstairs in the hostel when an American girl checked in (I overheard her complaining about the fact that the lockers had no locks as she didn’t bring one and it doesn’t mention that on the website). Turned out Maggie was staying in my room so we started chatting. She’s from Palo Alto and is working in Mae Sot, Thailand for nine months. She had business in Bangkok and came down a few days early to explore. At 8pm we finally left the hostel to get something to eat and ended up at a street stall a few blocks down the road. I ordered a phad siewe dish, which was very mild, especially compared with my lunch. We had a nice time chatting and eventually came back to shower and go to sleep.
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